Blog
News, insight and tips from the social web.
The Hoop blog covers the evolving digital landscape, social media, mobile communications, content marketing and also includes 5 top finds and Fish on Friday. Feel free to make comments.
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Responsive web design: another fad in design and development? »
There are high hopes that responsive web design will lead to great online experiences. We take a look at the method of the moment.
Think about the devices you use to access the web. Chances are you use a desktop or laptop computer. But you might also access it through a smartphone, tablet PC, games console or TV. Do each of these devices give you the same useful experience visiting your favourite websites? If not, why not?
The web, up until now, has been designed from a uniform perspective. Taking its lead from print design, web design has strived to reproduce templates across all of the devices that you might use. This was good for a time. But this "must look the same" approach missed the true potential of the medium.
Unlocking the potential of the web
Responsive Web Design is causing great excitement in the industry as it promises to unlock new digital ideas and experiences. RWD is the method of the moment, but before it came Graceful Degradation, Progressive Enhancement and many other design methods aimed at pushing the medium forward. The difference this time is that, where previous approaches chipped away at the surface of pixel perfection, RWD demands a completely new understanding of how a web page works.
RWD increases the value of web content, no matter what device you use to look at it. Value to the visitor is determined by the content, interaction or tasks they can complete. Think of your favourite social network. A responsive version of it would adapt to your device, making it easy and intuitive to catch up on news, find new friends or contacts and update your profile. If the website was not responsive you would need to zoom into the page on a mobile device and struggle with buttons designed for desktop interaction – giving you a poor experience and bad impression of the brand.
The potential for RWD goes beyond mobile. However, the rapid increase in the use of mobile devices, with different resolutions and features like touch screens, has been a key driving force in the return to some of the founding principles of the web. Content is king and, combined with well structured code, you can use it to make your website support your brand values. As many businesses and organisations have found in the digital age; brand value is not about appearance, it is about user experience.
So where do we go from here?
The latest responsive site we launched has seen a surge in traffic from mobile devices. iPhone increased by 275%, Android by 484% and an astonishing 1040% on iPad. There was a clear business case for creating a responsive website in this case. Perhaps there's one for yours?
We're convinced responsive website design delivers a better user and brand experience and we're currently working on new responsive websites for clients and ourselves. If you think your customers deserve a great online experience get in touch.
Categories: Insight
Tags: Business strategy, Content strategy, Digital strategy, HTML5, Mobile, Mobile First, Reputation, thisishoop, User centred thinking, User Experience
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Are FTSE 100 websites missing out on mobile? »
A recent survey of FTSE 100 websites signals a resounding yes. We highlight the huge mobile opportunity presented to corporate marketing departments.
Customers, investors and the media have fully embraced the mobile web and the opportunities the platform presents. We've covered much of this in great detail in previous posts.
But new research, released last week, shows that the majority of the corporate world has yet to wake up to this change in consumer behaviour and realise the potential mobile presents for their business.
The report, the first of its kind and published by Magus and Investis, has some sobering statistics about just how ill-prepared the FTSE 100 is to meet people's needs in the changing consumer landscape.
Despite mobile website traffic being predicted to overtake desktop traffic in 2014, it's startling to know that 80% of the FTSE100 currently don't offer support for mobile devices. Of that 80%, it is reported that user experience on mobile is further worsened by, on average, 4.25 compliance issues per webpage.
Corporate sites don't matter on the social web
Attitudes towards the importance of corporate websites vary from business to business. Many brand owners prioritise digital investment at both brand and consumer level; whilst others prefer to invest 'on platform' in a bid to be more social.
Marketers must be mindful though that not everyone who matters to their business is game for being social – or likely to believe the upbeat advertising message. Consumers, investors and employees increasingly want to know what a business stands for; not just just what they do, make or sell.
- Sustainability has moved from the margins to core business strategy
- Mobile web browsing will outnumber desktop browsing within 2 years
Tying these two realities together is this: people who really want to know about the business behind a brand will find the info they need in many places online, including the corporate website. And increasingly, when looking for this information, they'll be using a mobile device.
For the small percentage of corporate websites that do offer mobile support, just 4% have dedicated fully mobile sites. The remainder "typically cover investor relations (IR) information such as news, press releases, share price performance data and corporate contact information, and are updated simultaneously with the corporate website".
Olympian misjudgement
For mobile users trying to access corporate content online, the current experience is generally poor. But, as the new report states in its conclusion, there is huge opportunity to "reward early adopters with competitive advantage and increased audience share".
In a year when many FSTE 100 companies are sponsoring the London 2012 Olympics, another once in a lifetime opportunity to engage new audiences and maximise return from their investment might be missed.
Serving the right content for the device
Mobile devices have specific functional capabilities that suit particular content and user experience. Smartphones are particularly well-suited to delivering easily digestible content in bite size chunks. Tablets, on the other hand, are better for more immersive experiences and richer content such as video. Corporate web managers must do more to understand the basics of the mobile web – but, according to the research, none of the surveyed corporate sites have been built using responsive technology.
What is clear is that those companies take the opportunity of mobile and future-proof themselves with useable, mobile-friendly content will reap the benefits. Hoop recently completed a fully mobile-optimised responsive website for PepsiCo – who have seen (year on year) website traffic increase by 275% (iPhone) to 484% (Android) and an astounding 1040% on iPad.
Download the report and get in touch if you'd like Hoop to help you go mobile.
Categories: Insight
Tags: Content strategy, Digital strategy, Mobile, Mobile First, Reputation
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5 top finds #32 »
Doggie paddling, record breaking crowdfunding, tech sings the blues, food art and what's wrong with technology blogging. It's 5 top finds...
1. Underwater dogs
Think pet photography can be a bit boring? We did too – until we saw Seth Castell's work with some canine friends in a swimming pool. Pure genius!
2. Kickstarter goes seven figures (twice)
Last week, disruptive crowdfunding platform Kickstarter (where people pledge money to support creative projects) made history. They had their first ever project, the Elevation Dock, reach $1,000,000 in pledges. Four hours later, Double Fine Adventure broke the $1M barrier – shortly after reaching the project's $400,000 funding goal in just 8 hours. The Kickstarter blog has the details...
3. My printer is a singer
It's not every day you hear an HP printer and a hard drive(!) cover The Animal's hit single 'The House of the Rising Sun' from 1964.
4. Hirst light sliced
We're in love with 'Low-Commitment Projects', the collaborative project between two American artists Brittany Powell and Tae Kitakata. The 'Sandwich Artist' is definitely a tasty treat!
5. It's not about the pageviews
With the slow death of print media, digital journalists/bloggers are having to pick up the pace of publishing content online – more pageviews bring more advertising revenue.
However, quantity does not always mean quality, as ex-professional blogger MG Siegler discusses in this insightful post.
Categories: 5 top finds
Tags: Art, Content strategy, Digital strategy, Photography, Reputation, Social media, Startup
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Search, plus Your World »
Google's latest announcement about forcing Google+ into live search results poses some interesting questions; but is the initiative as bad as everyone's making it out to be?
We've covered Google's apparent attempts at becoming social at length here on the Hoop blog; but have always been a little suspicious of their true motives. When we discussed Social Search back in October, we concluded the post with the following:
It's the '+1' button that is going to make or break their attempt to become social. Google+ is just a novel way to encourage people to sign up for a Google profile – which then gives Google access to users' social data but more importantly the '+1' in search. A 'truly social' search experience.
On Tuesday, Google Fellow Amrit Singhal (the engineer partly responsible for the algorithms that Google's search engine is based on) published a blog post entitled "Search, plus Your World" – which is summarised below.
- Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page;
- Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you're close to or might be interested in following; and,
- People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind most every query is a community.
Over the next week, Google are rolling out the above three features (which we'll call Search+ for now); all of which result in personalised search results to live search queries. These features will be available to the 40m users with Google+ accounts; producing individual results for each user's query, populated with content from (only) Google+.
On the one hand, the (opt-out) Search+ intiative is wonderful – and will provide Google+ users with truly personalised (and relevant) content from their social circles. It's also worth noting just how much Google appear to be supporting social data. Just think how (much more) useful Google would become if it were to feature content pulled from every one of your social networks! But then on the other hand, Search+ raises some interesting questions.
- As Search+ won't include results from Facebook (which blocks Google from crawling it) and priorities Google+ content over the publicly available results from Twitter, is Search+ anti-competitive?
- Will Search+ cause Facebook and Twitter to open up and allow Google to crawl their non-public content – or simply deepen the animosity between the three companies?
- Will the personalisation of results from the world's most popular search engine (by market share) have consequences on how we discover information?
Facebook has always been a closed platform, denying Google the right to crawl its databases – although some public posts are available to the search engine. But then Facebook and Google have never really been best buddies.
Twitter did have the 'Realtime Search' agreement with Google, where the search engine's crawlers could access tweets and profiles. But then, for some reason, the two companies couldn't see eye to eye when the agreement came for renewal. So it wasn't.
It has been suggested, although this is a long shot, that Search+ is an extremely risky move to get Facebook (and to an extent Twitter) – its serious competitors in social – to open up (to search) or face the same antritrust procedures that are currently being leveled at Google. Given the history, it's extremely unlikely this is going to happen.
So what's wrong with Search+? Yes, it's a little anti-competitive and will probably lead to a slap on the wrist from an antitrust inquiry – but it'll do little to clear the air between Google, Facebook and Twitter. Search+ won't cause Google+'s competitors to open up their databases either. It's Google's focus on personalisation and their departure from delivering relevant and unbiased results to queries that is causing the issue – an issue explained by Eli Pariser in his TED talk below.
Google's job, as one of the best and most popular search engines in the world, is to deliver unbiased, un-prioritised results to its users. Even if those results do include Google's competitors.
By forcing Google+ into the results page and skewing the relevancy of results, Google is ultimately moving away from what made Google successful in the first place.
Categories: Insight
Tags: Content strategy, Digital strategy, facebook, Google, Google+, Reputation, SEO, Social search, Twitter
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It all adds up to mobile first »
Here's some big numbers: Google estimate that mobile advertisers spent $1bn this year, a figure set to significantly increase to $4.4bn by 2015.
Businesses that ignore the growth in the numbers of mobile using customers are in danger of being ignored.
If you've been following the Hoop blog over the past few months, you'll have seen how important we think mobile devices are. Smartphones and tablet devices are changing the way businesses market their content, advertise to consumers and are leading to a more user-centered approach to digital strategy. That is, one that recognises the change in human behaviour and doesn't fight against it.
But if you still need convincing that you should be thinking mobile first, we've compiled a selection of awesome infographics that might just bring you round. Simply click the links to view the full infographic.
The size of the mobile market should not be underestimated (via iStrategy)...
Mobile devices are changing the way we buy things (courtesy of Microsoft Tag)...
They're changing the way we interact with each other on social networks (thanks Flowtown)...
And (American) small businesses are relying on mobile devices and connectivity to survive (via Intuit for Mashable)...
The markets are increasingly embracing mobile technology. And if Econsultancy's recent Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing is anything to go by, businesses are starting to realise that if they don't start thinking mobile first they'll be left behind.
We recently applied this 'Mobile First' methodology to a new client website with a design that is responsive to the end-users' device. Feedback so far has been fantastic. If your business needs help developing a digital strategy that puts mobile first, why not get in touch?
Categories: Insight
Tags: Content strategy, Digital strategy, Mobile, Mobile First, User centred thinking
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Search goes social »
What is social search and why is it important?
Google doesn't like Facebook and the feeling's mutual. Both Silicon Valley heavyweights are competing for supremacy and, to start with, it looked like Facebook had won the first round. But we're not writing Google off just yet...
Facebook are without a doubt one of the biggest companies in the technology space. They've got the biggest social network in the world with 800m active users – and they predict they'll be the world's first 1bn-strong network by the end of 2011. Facebook were (and, to an extent, still are) pretty much unrivalled in the social space until Google launched their latest attempt at a social network in July.
Prior to launching their social network, Google rolled out the '+1' this April – which was seen by many as an attempt to compete with Facebook's 'Like' button (which, after being released in April 2010, is currently used on around 2bn posts a day).
Google described the '+1' as:
"...digital shorthand for "this is pretty cool." To recommend something, all you have to do is click +1 on a webpage or ad you find useful. These +1's will then start appearing in Google's search results."
Earlier this week, Google announced that their '+1' button is being "served 2bn times a day", which may not match Facebook's 'Like' button statistics (the 'Like' button is actually being used 2.3bn times a day) – but it's close. This isn't just Google encroaching on Facebook's social space; the '+1' button hints at something bigger.
Google+ has only been open to the public for just over a month, but it's already doubled its user base from 25m to 50m and is growing at 4% a day (with a predicted 2m new users signing up every day). Admittedly, Google+ is quite a way off Facebook's numbers, but Google might not be after Facebook's crown after all. When we first covered the social network on the Hoop blog we said:
"If Google can fit the rest of their portfolio (search, advertising, mobile, video, blogging to name but a few of their other services) into this social venture, they'll have something that none of the other networks have. A truly social all-web encompassing experience."
Google aren't pinning all of their hopes and dreams on Google+ (although it's fair to say it's important to them). The social network will do them well, but it won't ever become their primary source of income. Advertising is, and, for the foreseeable future, will continue to be.
It's the '+1' button that is going to make or break their attempt to become social. Google+ is just a novel way to encourage people to sign up for a Google profile – which then gives Google access to users' social data but more importantly the '+1' in search. A 'truly social' search experience.
Google thinks this is the future; personalised results to each and every search query – with results (paid and organic) ranked using recommendations from people in your social circles.
Because, after all, you're just asking Google a question. And they want to give you the right answer.
So is the +1 button the key to unlocking Google's future; or is social search a flash in the pan? Feel free to leave us a comment below or let us know in via email or Twitter.
Categories: Insight
Tags: Content management, Content strategy, Digital strategy, facebook, Google, Google+, SEO, Social search, User centred thinking
