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Strategy

Goals, Strategies and Tactics

posted on 2/11/10 by Michael Koppelman

The three words in the title above are well-understood but often misused. When it comes to business and the web specifically, there is a lot of confusion about these three little words and how they relate. Let me try to clear it up.

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Interactive Testing, Part 2: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

posted on 1/15/10 by Dave Dohmeier and Meghan Wilker

For many people SEO is a subject that is shrouded in mystery, but it is one of the leading factors in having a successful website presence. Making things more complicated is the fact that the SEO landscape is littered with shady providers, which can make it a difficult task to tackle well. Still, there are a lot of things you can test for, and best practices to help guide you.

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Interactive Testing, Part 1: Forms & Data Collection

posted on 12/17/09 by Dave Dohmeier

Testing interactive design is one of the most difficult and challenging assignments for a Quality Assurance team.  Interactive is a mashup of beautiful design, user experience layouts, carefully constructed semantic markup, clear and powerful client content, branding, relationships with other websites and (usually) a solid amount of custom back-end programming and database design.  Part of my role at Clockwork is building testcases and testplans, which both capture the subtleties that define a great user experience (and a successful website launch) and ensure we can reliably repeat that success for all clients.  This series of posts gives you a glimpse at some of the things that a solid test plan must address. Many of these are things people never remember to ask for, but require careful consideration.

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Kiss My Apps

posted on 11/24/09 by Ryan Evans

Yeah, you heard me. Kiss ‘em! Don’t get me wrong – I love apps. But, too many marketers are mistaking "There's an app for that" for a true mobile marketing strategy.

The emergence and rapid adoption of apps have given mobile the attention that it deserves, but overall they’ve given marketers and brands the wrong impression when it comes to mobile strategy.

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QR Codes 101

posted on 9/28/09 by Ryan Evans

Have you ever seen what you thought was a bar code but didn't quite look like a traditional bar code? You may have been looking at a QR code.

QR codes haven't made many appearances in the US yet but they are gaining momentum. A fellow Clockworker spotted one on a movie poster in Minneapolis this past summer. QR codes are widely popular in Japan and Europe, and are used in a variety of ways from advertising to restaurant menus.

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Web Development as acted out by toys

posted on 12/12/05 by Martin Grider

Step 3:  Wireframe
Step 3: Wireframe,
originally uploaded by pingmag.
PingMag recently posted an article about The Web Development Process. It's pretty standard as far as process goes, but what's interesting are these cute illustrations. [Via Matt.]
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Better Naming Through Technology

posted on 7/6/05 by Meghan Wilker

A client sent me a link to this baby name website today -- the Baby Name Wizard's Name Voyager. Even though I'm only 13 weeks along (27 weeks to go, yo!), I've already seen my fair share of baby name websites. This one is by far the best because it gives you a visual representation of a name's popularity over time. Like most people, I don't want my kid to have the same name as every other kid at preschool. I mean, come on -- didn't we all go to school with like 27 Jennifers? Continue Reading | Add a Comment
Domains

posted on 5/17/05 by Michael Koppelman

I was pondering what is better from a marketing perspective: newproduct.domain.com or www.domain.com/newproduct (as an example) I think the world is starting to get used to 2nd level domains such that marketing something as newproduct.domain.com is mnemonic. I think 2nd level domains are easier to speak as well. They are also a hair more concise. On the other hand, I think brands too often use too many domains when they should focus on marketing a single domain all the time. CNN does this, for example. The only domain they market is cnn.com. I think a lot of companies grab every possible domain as a defensive strategy and that might be valuable in some respects but in general I think leads to defocus. What do you think? Continue Reading | 2 Comments
Improving the Design of Websites & Powerpoints

posted on 5/10/05 by Michael Opperman

A couple of recommendations: Reinventing the Wheel, Jennifer Helfand "As inventive as instructive, information wheels-or volvelles-have been used since the fourteenth century to measure, record, predict, and calculate everything form time and space to military history and recipes. In this fascinating book, designer and critic Jessica Helfand offers an in-depth look at these unique artifacts, which are not only clever and amusing-where else could you dial-in ingredients to concoct "Creamed Oysters and Celery"?-but, Helfand argues, relevant as a model for modern interactive design." Winterhouse and a piece that passed briefly through my hands this week (a recommendation and generous loan from a fellow evangelist): The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint, Edward Tufte "In corporate and government bureaucracies, the standard method for making a presentation is to talk about a list of points organized onto slides projected up on the wall. For many years, overhead projectors lit up transparencies, and slide projectors showed high-resolution 35mm slides. Now "slideware" computer programs for presentations are nearly everywhere. Early in the 21st century, several hundred million copies of Microsoft PowerPoint were turning out trillions of slides each year. Alas, slideware often reduces the analytical quality of presentations. In particular, the popular PowerPoint templates (ready-made designs) usually weaken verbal and spatial reasoning, and almost always corrupt statistical analysis. What is the problem with PowerPoint? And how can we improve our presentations?" Edward Tufte Continue Reading | Add a Comment