Breaking the Kubernetes Kill Chain: Host Path Mount
Content Management & Web Analytics Theatre; Classy, clowny or crude? How your site's typography affects your brand
1. Classy, Clowny or Crude? How your
site's typography affects your brand
Davin Kluttz – Extensis
Sponsored by: Organised by:
2. Classy, Clowny or
Crude?
Branding & the New Web
Typography
Davin Kluttz
Product Line Manager
Extensis, a Celartem company
3. About Me
• 18+ years in design/advertising
– Print, publishing, web and video
– Digital media and technology
• Software solutions
– Mission: Tame ―digital chaos‖
– Individuals & workgroups
– Preserving creativity (and sanity)
25. New World Order: real fonts
• Replace various hacks &
stopgaps
• From web server
• Download to viewer’s browser
• Regular font files (+ wrapper)
26. 3 benefits of ―real‖ Web
Fonts
• Creative choice
• Branding consistency
• Not images
• Standards / Not hacks
27. How Web Fonts are used
• @font-face CSS tag > font-
family
@font-face {
font-family: MyCustomFont;
src: url("http://fnt.webink.com/?drawer=FCDD59A0-EEB1-47EF-
A527-63FC9C275EEA&font=D1617946-FD8A-ABCE-E54E-
048179EE95A8");
font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant:normal;
}
• Called w/font-family in
CSS/HTML
.body {
28. Challenges of using Web
Fonts
• Most licenses don’t include web
• Many delivery formats required
– (SVG)
– TTF
– OTF
– EOT
– WOFF-TTF
– WOFF-OTF
29. Two ways to integrate Web
Fonts
• Self-hosting
• Web font service
30. Self-hosting +/-
• Pros
– No outside service dependencies
– Complete control
– Usually one-time licensing fees
• Cons
– Licensing issues for self-conversion
– Serving multiple formats to browsers
– Keeping up with browser changes
31. Benefits of web font
services
• Easiest way to use web fonts
• Keeps it legal
• Handles browser font
requirements
• Fonts served by cloud-based
service
• Easier integration
32. Dangers of Web Fonts
• More options ≠ always better
• Legal usage (e.g. Santorum)
41. After the Cloudrush: Proven low
risk steps to evolve your website
Simon Abrahams – Rackspace
Hosting
Sponsored by: Organised by:
42. Improving Online Customer
Experience and Sales with Live Chat
Susanne Balter - Netop Business
Solutions
Sponsored by: Organised by:
43. How Cloud Technology Helped
Vodafone Improve Their
Client/Agency Interactions
Josh Gilbertson - SkyDox
Sponsored by: Organised by:
44. Discover how leading organisations are
using IBM's Coremetrics Digital Marketing
Optimisation Suite to capitalise on the
opportunity presented by the growing
digital age
Nicole Penn – IBM
Sponsored by: Organised by:
71. Why am I here?
18+ years in design/advertising
Print, publishing, web and video
Digital media and technology
Software solutions
Mission: Tame “digital chaos”
Individuals & workgroups
Preserving creativity (and sanity)
72. Why are you here?
Was “DAM” a typo?
Digital Asset Management
What is this not?
Not a product demo
Chance to learn
Ask questions
73. What is an “asset”
Digital Assets, not Financial Assets
When is a file an asset?
Purchased or licensed
It’s critical.
Re-create or re-purchase, if it cannot be
found.
(Lost time, money)
It’s only an asset if you can find it!
So, let’s “manage” these. Make sense?
75. #1 - Search
Don’t be “old fashioned”
Isolated searches
Folder-based searches
Filenames
Centralised search
One place to find everything
Including archives
Metadata
76. #2 - Metadata
A simple definition:
Metadata is data about your data.
Keywords or “tags”
Metadata can be specific
Author or Photographer Name
License Expiration
Project ID
DAM systems read/embed metadata
77. #3 - Preview
Quiz: What must you have, in order to view…
100 photos from a Nikon professional camera?
An InDesign document?
A Keynote presentation?
DAM can preview anything.
No costly applications to install
Make (and note) decisions
78. #4 - Sharing
Sharing is vital
Reduce turnaround time (less email, etc.)
Let others contribute metadata
The DAM itself is shared:
Who needs access?
What do they need to access?
How do they access?
DAM can provide various ways to share.
79. #5 - Derivatives
We’re the “experts”
The right tools and access to files
Bottleneck
Time better spent
Interruptions? DAM helps:
Single “master” file
Avoid duplicates: less storage, less chaos
Self-service, faster turnaround
Better communication
We do that using web fonts.So what exactly are web fonts? Web fonts reside on your web server and are downloaded to your readers machines when they view your pages.They are fairly easy to integrate into your site using a standard, easy @font-face CSS call.
Bring up WebINKLogin to demo@extensis.comShow Type DrawersWalk through Type Drawer Tabs – Fonts / Domains / SettingsEnsure that City of Type is a valid domainBack on Fonts Tab – show how to get CSS codeOpen City of Type siteOpen City of Type admin pageCopy CSS code from WebINK and paste into City of Type site Reload City of Type site and show how font has changed
First, what’s in a brand?A brand is a carefully crafted image that needs to be consistent across media. Wherever text is present, typography is a critical part of that image.
In fact, you could say that ALL typeface selection and even general typography should serve branding.
When brand image fails to match the type, the difference can be comical. This web site, The Comic Sans Project, remade a bunch of corporate logos using Comic Sans.(Whip through these next slides quickly and just point to which work and which don’t. We go from the ones that work, to mixed sets, to abject failures. Text below is a summary.)A few of them work, when Comic Sans is consistent with the existing brand image. Levi’s, MTV, Coke and Pepsi, for instance. Many of them fail horribly, such as HP, AC/DC and FedEx, because Comic Sans stands in contradiction to the brand image. It doesn’t have the heavy metal strength that AC/DC or Caterpillar need, the serious office atmosphere that IBM and FedEx require, or the elegance needed for Chanel, or the clean futurism demanded by NASA or Star Wars.
Sure, those are logos. Headlines and body text aren’t quite as obvious, but they too can be either consistent with a brand image or contradict it. This has long been accepted wisdom in print, but it is only now becoming fully understood for the web….
So let’s talk about web fonts and how web font selection has changed over the years.
For years, web design wasshackled by requiring the use of a few default fonts that could be guaranteed to exist on all users machines.
Everyone had to use the same few boring old fonts that every other web site used.
It was the infancy of Web typography, a lot like the early days of the automobile. As Henry Ford said, customers could get their Ford Model T in any color they wanted—as long as it was black.
But now, real web fonts allow us to leave Times, Helvetica, Arial and Comic Sans where they belong — in the internet Dark Ages!
So what exactly are “real” web fonts? Web fonts reside on your web server and are downloaded to your readers machines when they view your pages.They are easy to integrate into a web site using a standard, easy @font-face CSS call.
Choice: Creativity because you can choose from thousands of fonts instead of a dozenBranding consistency with other media. Finally you can present the same typographic image on the web as in print.Not being images: easy to change, SEO, scalable without going jaggy/fuzzy, performance advantages over graphicsStandards: reliably works across platforms and browsers. Contrast sIFR, which being Flash-based doesn’t work on iPad and iPhone.The way that web sites were designed in the past, most web pages were designed to use a set of default fonts that you could guarantee were are available on the site reader’s machine. If you wanted to use more creative typography on a site, you needed to render the text in an image or use JavaScript or other hacks. With recent developments in web browsers, namely the @font-face CSS call, you can now use creative real fonts to render your page. So why should you use web fonts? Beyond the obvious creative element, when you update a site, it’s often important to be able quickly update your site using the same text. If you’ve rendered your text in an image, you would need to re-render all of your text using Photoshop, which is not practical. Using other methods like JavaScript, sIFR, Cufon, etc are intermediate solutions and hacks that don’t give you the a same power of a real font.Having the ability to maintain brand consistency with all of your other materials is critical. Why should the web site be the only outbound communication that doesn’t project the same visual style as the rest of the organization’s materials?And of course, then there’s the all important Search Engine Optimization. This means that when the search engine bots from Google, Yahoo, Bing and so forth crawl your page, they will rank actual text in real fonts higher than anything that’s rendered using an alternate method. If your text is trapped in an image, it’s very likely that your text won’t even be captured at all.
You might want to delete or skip this slide if it seems to techno-geeky for the audience. Indeed, you could also trim the next several slides on web fonts and move straight into typography classy/clowny/crude.
There are a couple of complications around web fonts you ought to be aware of.Few if any of the desktop fonts you have on your computer were licensed to you on terms that include web usage rights. To get such rights you generally need to pay extra.Another complication is that if you want to cover all browsers in general use today, there are a bunch of formats in which fonts need to be delivered. It’s all coalescing around WOFF as a universal format, but until older and non-conformant browser versions are extinct, other formats still need to be served up.
You can host your own fonts, which has pluses and minuses.On the pro side is control, and avoiding outside dependencies. On the con side, you have to deal with licensing issues for each and every font, it’s not like you can just convert your desktop fonts to web fonts and not worry about it. You also have to deal with all the browser issues. New browser versions frequently break existing web font implementations, as we’ve seen at WebINK many times in recent years.
More options doesn’t necessarily mean better results. For example, just because you have 4000 fonts doesn’t mean you should use them all on one site. Luckily, we don’t see too much of that with “real” web fonts, yet. As they become more widely used that will be more of an issue, no doubt.The other problem is staying legal with one’s usage. This is a matter of making sure that your license allows you to use the font on the web. There are several ways of getting a proper license for this, including working with a web font service like ours, that takes care of it for you. If you don’t, well, people may notice. http://blog.extensis.com/font-compliance/rick-santorums-website-using-pirated-font-leads-to-2-million-lawsuit.php
So, now that you know how web fonts work and where they come from, let’s move on to talking about how you can use them effectively… or not.
So let’s look at some web sites and their choice of fonts, and see how they do well or poorly.(This is where you flip to your web browser. Suggest staging all the required sites in order, so you don’t need a live web connection. You may want to shorten the list. The first set are all really nice, the second set specifically use WebINK.)http://trentwalton.com/This shows how much you can do with just one typeface, in this case FontFont’s FF Meta Serif by Erik Spiekermann and friends. Only the pullquotes are in another typeface, Abroise from PorchezTypofonderie. A fine example of Franco-German cooperation.http://www.nicolapotts.com/Museo and Museo Serif, both by Jos Buivenga of exljbris, complement each other perfectly. The use of very light weights makes it feel especially airy and classy in what might otherwise feel like a jumbled layout.http://thebeautyshoppe.org/Another light weight type choice, this time Open Sans by Steve Matteson. Although generally very nice, it is looking a bit too light and fading out in the 16 px body text on the Mac, but it holds up better in a Windows browser. A good example of why one needs to test on multiple platforms, but still a nice piece of work.http://captaindash.com/#Juxtaposition of a script face with the sans serif Gotham (by Hoefler & Frere-Jones) creates a strong and flavorful pairing. Body text on interior pages is a little small, but generous line spacing keeps it from seeming too cramped.http://lawineagency.com/This site is a bit over the top, but in an on-purpose way. They use a mix of live fonts and images to achieve their overall retro look.http://www.webvanta.com/WebVanta is a web hosting and development company. They use our WebINK web font service to deliver their brand typeface, Josh Darden’s Omnes, for headings and titles on their web site. By using Omnes in a lighter weight than usual they emphasize elegance and high-tech. Traditional web-safe fonts offer nothing equivalent. (due to not having “light” weights available)http://www.lexisnexis.com/en-us/home.pageIt seems like Omnes is mega-popular right now. Here’s another company, LexisNexis, the database content providers, using it for navigation menus and headings.http://www.forumone.com/Forum One uses Alternate Gothic No. 1 for headings to create a bold, crisp look. Again, there’s nothing similar among traditional web-safe fonts, because they don’t include any condensed typefaces other than Impact, which would be too bold here.http://www.infocus.com/InFocus uses Parisine, from PorchezTypofonderie, throughout almost all text, from body to headings. It’s warm, clean, legible, and just subtly unique.
Now a big step down from classy is clowny. Here are folks who have used web fonts and typography very poorly. Some are big, most are small.http://georgerrmartin.com/George R.R. Martin is the best-selling novelist of “A Game of Thrones” and its sequels. His site has had over 35 million visitors, and HBO is making an ongoing series from his novels, so you’d think he could afford a real web designer. But no, so we get text in Times in 15, 16 and 18 px, often bolded for no reason, and then elements randomly in Palatino (point at “GRRM,” way too close to Times for comfort). Ugh.http://www.realbusiness.com/This massively Flash-based site from Xerox has some other issues, but just one huge problem. The top navigation is simply too freakin’ light and illegible with its gradient light gray on a white background. It’s so bad that they have to duplicate it in a pop-over window when you first arrive.http://www.richardsbrothersseafoods.com.au/It’s not just the random mix of Arial and Helvetica (though that is bad enough). It’s not just the poor design. It’s that entire chunks of body text are frickin’ images! What looks like a clickable link in several spots turns out to be part of a non-clickable image. Including the rotating “email” graphic and the email address above it. WTF?
Pastclowny we get crude. These over the top web sites just fail spectacularly. Usually they have a lot more wrong with them than just fonts and typography.http://www.amazingthings.org/Wow, Georgia, Arial, Trebuchet, and more text colors than you can shake a stick at! Mega-fail! But for all that, at least they use color consistently through the site. One might legitimately wonder why each item on the calendar needs six different colors of text, however.http://www.lowpriceskates.com/I think it speaks for itself. http://www.blackhillsyouthfootball.com/This one too. Extra awful in Chrome. Despite the jumbloe of type colors and sizes, they do at least use Arial fairly consistently throughout, except for a little Comic Sans at top left.http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/Wow. How many different colors can you use on body text? You’d think it would be hard to go wrong sticking with web-safe fonts, but they mix Arial and Verdana at a range of similar-yet-different sizes (10, 11, 14, 15 16, 18, 20…). http://www.historianofthefuture.com/Hey, there are only two colors for the text, cyan and yellow. Of course, we can’t figure out which role each color is being used for, or what
Do a very quick demo of each tool. At least hit the page (and switch to Photoshop) and do the 30-second version of what each one does.
Say some polite ending words, move on to
Here are several places to go for more information. The last link, our WebINK “type resources” page, has lots of info on web typography and using web fonts.
Good Afternoon everyone, my name is Nicole Penn and I am a senior consultant with IBM. I work within the Enterprise Marketing Management Group in which IBM Coremetrics is a part. Today I’m going to be discussing with you the ways in which web analytics can be used in the every changing and growing digital age. My industry of expertise is retail so most of this presentation will be focused around this, however I will cover a few areas around the travel industry.Can I just get a quick show of hands from the audience as to who has used web analytics before? And any Coremetrics users out there?Great.
Well lets start by having a little reminisce about 2006 and how the online world differed.This was a time when online transactions were mostly performed on laptops and desktops, making website optimisation a little easier. It was also a time when smart phones where mostly owned by business users and where smart because you could check your email, and possibly read the news, ONLINE! Email campaigns where also simpler, with personalisation of emails often simply thought of as adding the customers name.Social Networking wasn’t for businesses yet, and Myspace and Bebo still we’re tops, but not for long, as Facebook came along and all but squished themTwitter was only a hatchling and the world had no idea how things would develop
And here we are, in 2012, Smart phones are now owned by 30% of the UK population and are truly smart. Not only can you send & receive email but you can watch videos, movies, share photos instantly over social networks, browse the web at top speed, order from your favourite shops and read reviews of products before you by items in store. You can check for your flight from your mobile and book your car parking while on route. These little devices make being online when ever where ever really possible. But it’s not just smart phones that have changed the way we interact with websites, there are now other internet ready devices such as tablets, tv’s and even fridges which make your online experience different and easy, where ever you are in your house. And all these devices now need to be optimised to ensure your customer has the best Smart experience possible.But it’s not just the devices that companies now need to consider. It’s the marketing strategies that have changed too. Social media marketing and personalisation also now need to be considered in the full web analytics and online strategy in order to reach as many customers as possible.
So although that was a brief summary of the last 6 years, those are the key areas of change which I have seen since I started with IBM. And today I’d like to go through some of these hot topics which customers are now focusing on.So i’ll be covering what some of our clients are doing in terms of optimisation, in particular around Social, Multi-Channel marketing, mobile as well as personalisation and how web analytics fits into these areas.
Lets first look briefly at what IBM Coremetrics is
IBM Coremetrics is the leader in web analytics, and I can say that because we really did rank as leader overall in The Forrester Wave™: Web Analytics, Q4 2011, with the highest scores in corporate strategy and application usability and administration.IBM Coremetrics have a large suite of products all focused around helping clients gain a 360° view of their customers. This is achieved by the LIVE profile data, or Lifetime Individual Visitor Experience, which we store for each visitor using cookies. Their interactions on the site, and across devices, online marketing campaigns, advertising and social media can all be attributed back to that LIVE profile and conversions on the site can accurately be attributed to the correct referral source.The suite of products range from pre-built web analytics reporting, to customer specific, more advanced reporting, benchmarking, targeted email and recommendations, search and social reporting. But I’m not here to give a product pitch, so let’s move onto what areas our clients are currently interested in.
Social media has been a slightly complicated area for our clients. Everyone wants to do, some are doing it well, some not so much, but there are key questions which clients ask us about it.
Most clients want to know what the top performing Social Media Sites are and how they perform both generally as well as seasonallyClients are also looking at their strategy and how they fit social media into their current online and web analytics strategiesHow to measure your social media campaigns is complex, and a big question. First you have to have a strategy with goals to measure and then establish the KPI’s after which we can help determine which reporting is best and how to track your site and campaigns to get the data.But some of the biggest questions we are seeing around social media, are how does it affect user behaviour? Who are our customers that are using it? What are their demographics? Do they act differently on the site if they come from social media versus other channels?We wont have time to answer all these questions today, but lets have a look at a few.
With the IBM Coremetrics Benchmark application, which hundreds of top retailers are part of, we can see what the UK Retail industry is currently looking like in the world of Social Media.The average conversion rate on a UK retail site is 3.5%, but how does that compare when sessions come to the site from Social channels?Conversion is almost doubled nearly at 7%!This is already starting to show how closer engagement with the customer and a more interactive method of driving customers to the site, really can pay off. The only thing is, getting visitors to the site. Social Sites made up less than 1% of the total site traffic, but it’s clear that this was well qualified traffic, so increasing this figure should be looked at.
If we keep digging into Benchmark data we’ll be able to see how individual social media sites perform and some of the results are interesting. Most clients only really look at FB, Twitter and Youtube and as you can see the % of traffic coming to the site from these channels, is still low, but Facebook is tops. But if we then look at the conversion rates facebook conversion, whilst still over 100% more than the site average, is considerably less than Twitter and YouTube. Clients want to then dig into this more and try to understand what campaigns where driving the twitter and Youtube conversions and how can they replicate those to drive more sales on the site.
As I mentioned majority of our clients are using facebook, Youtube and Twitter as their Social media Channels, but each of these has a very different target audience and different objectives.Let’s look at Screwfix as an example. They have a large following on these key social media sites, with nearly 32,000 fans on facebook, over ½ million video views on you tube and over 7,500 followers on Twitter. Both Facebook and Twitter show deals and products which drive customers to the website, but their facebook page is more graphically driven, where Twitter does seem to be the main place for quick customer support queries. Customers can “like” or comment on products on their website during the purchase process and there is even a live twitter steam which displays on the product pages. Screwfix TV, the YouTube channel, is more focused on how the products work, but still drive traffic back to the website.All of these interactions within the social media campaigns can be tracked and measured, from the top tweeter to the user reviews, giving Screwfix a full understanding of who the different visitors are on each channel, in order to target appropriate content, to find out what products they are interested in and what conversations and videos drive higher conversionsClients are getting creative with Social, and some are now doing things like getting their customers to “check-in” on facebook when they go instore in order to get a discount and they are also venturing into F-commerce. Not many are doing it full yet, but It does appear to be a trend within the beauty industry. a few customers have category type pages on their facebook page, showing all the Shoes they sell for example, This looks like somewhere you can make a purchase, but you are inevitably taken back to the main site to complete your purchase. Of course the key things with this are 1) ensure you take your visitor to the correct point in their purchase process when they arrive at your site, 2) Make sure you are accurately tracking the purchase to show as a conversion from Facebook.
It’s not just retail doing this though, one of our travel clients, gives facebook users the ability to make a booking for a hotel from their facebook page. Well to check for availability anyway. You can start the booking process on Facebook and then continue through to their website to complete it.
Another big trend we are seeing is mobile optimisation and the usage of web analytics to track performance
This has to be one of the hottest topics at the moment with lots of our clients asking questions around the performance of individual mobile devices as well as how smart phones compare to tablets in the performance ranks.But a lot of clients are only now starting to understand the importance of mobile measurement with web analytics and so we are getting a lot of clients who may have had a mobile site for a little while but it’s been untracked, so they want to try and get it tagged up as quickly as possible to start understand their mobile ROI. Other clients are still designing their site, and deciding between mobile site vs app, and questions arise around how visitors behaviour across these areas differs and whether they should opt for mobile site, app, both and also do a tablet optimised site.It really is a minefield with clients wanting to get up and running as quickly as possible, but needing to slow down to understand what will work best for them.
Let’s have a quick look at some more Benchmark data this time around how different mobile devices convert. We know that the biggest war is between Apple and Android, but who does better in converting customers. As you can see the iPhone is keeping up with the site average and converting sessions at a slightly higher rate. Android phones are slightly ahead with an 11% increase over iPhone...but we havent looked at iPad yet! Tablets in general have a higher conversion, but iPad takes apple into the winning corner with over 5% conversion. That’s a 46% increase in conversion over the site overage.
Now as mobile is such a hot topic and a competitive one at that, many of our clients are keeping their cards close to their chest externally, but I can give you a rough idea of the main things clients are looking at now.The first thing is tracking. In order to understand the performance of mobile devices / mobile site/ apps and tablets, each of these need to be tagged in the correct way. Before this can begin clients have to fully understand what their mobile strategy is, what their goals are, and what KPI’s they want to be able to analyse. They also need to understand what the general behaviour of visitors on these sites is like so that they can track accordingly. This is where they benefit from working with one of our consultants as we have the industry knowledge and expertise to guide them in the right direction, based on their business objectives. Clients need to start to think about whether they want to consider their mobile site as a separate entity / site or part of their main site. Whether they want to see how visitors interact with their mobile site and main site in the same session and whether visitors are using their mobile site as a research or buying tool.Once all the accurate tagging is in place and data is being collected we work with our clients to understand these key questions. And to really know how the mobile site / app / tablet is performing and what changes are required to optimise them to be more effective.
Multichannel is another buzz word which clients are going crazy for
So what is multichannel. Well within retail there have always been a few channels where you can reach clients, catalogue, in store or the website, but now there are even more channels. Social media, mobile, apps, tablets, text & reserve, Click & collect, QR Codes, customer support, i think i could go on!But what clients want to gain is this 360° view of how their customers interact with these channels. Consumers now a days can use multiple channels to purchase a product and retailers want to know what happens at each stage. Take this example: Jenny is sitting on the bus looking at Facebook on her mobile, she’s on her way to town to buy a dress and she sees a promotion on her favorite high street store’s facebook page, so she goes to their website, browses around and sees what she likes, she goes to their store locator and when she arrives in town she walks into the store, swipes her loyalty card and buys the item.But tracking all these interactions and then tying them back to the same visitor can be problematical.
And this is what leads our clients to ask the big question, How do we perform multichannel analysis?Well the main thing is ensuring you include all of your channels within your overall strategy. This can sometimes be difficult for clients as different teams can have different strategies, Online can differ to catalogue which differs to Social, but making sure that their is some common measuring ground between all the channels is essential if you are going to measure these accurately.Without tracking these accurately incorrect assumptions could be made, in this example, the assumption could be “social and mobile didn’t convert”. But while in this example we were lucky that Jenny used a loyalty card instore, and that card ID was stored on the website, so we could link the transaction back to her, the reality of it is that not all stores do loyalty cards, nor do visitors enter a store with a visitor ID attached to them. So how do we link up these interactions? Clients have to start getting clever, and looking at store locator use on the mobile, coupon downloads and coming up with ways to join the online experience with the physical in a trackable way.
Let’s have a look at something one of our clients, Halfords, is doing. QR Codes have been a round for a few years now, but we’re seeing more and more of them being used to drive traffic to websites, in the form of competitions and discount codes for example. Halfords though are making clever use of QR Codes within their multichannel strategy. They have posters around the store with QR Codes on encouraging visitors to download the code to their mobile to win vouchers and also to read reviews about products in store, from the website. But another clever way they are using them is to direct customers to the information pages which advise on which products they need. So say John walks into a store and needs to buy replacement mirror glass for car wing mirror, he gets in store and sees a big printed booklet which he has to trawl through to find which glass he should use, OR he sees a QR quote, scans it with his smart phone and is taken to a page on the mobile site where he enters his reg number and ta-da the type of glass he needs.
The final area which, although it’s been around for a while, clients are still very interested in, is personalisation. Both of the website, of emails and of online advertising.Retailers are moving away from the idea that the homepage on the site is all about them and positioning their brand and products and they are starting to realise that this is prime area to start the process of getting into the customers mind. Retailers want to start personalising the whole customer journey, from the homepage right through the browsing and checkout processes and provide the customer with relevant products based on what they have browsed before, what they have purchased before, searched for and abandoned.The vision is to picture a shopping mall. When you enter it for the first time you dont know where any of the shops are that you want to purchase from. You spend hours walking around and browsing. But once you know where the shops are that you like, you can walk straight in there, up to the shop and purchase your items. In the online world, retailers want to make this vision even grander. Imagine, walking up to that store and being greeted at the entrance with all the items you like. So you don’t even have to trawl through the shop! The faster, more relevant the site, the quicker and more likely the purchase!This is where using IBM Coremetrics data, segmenting it based on customer behaviour, and mixing it up in the super smart Intelligent Offer algorithms, really starts to personalise the online shopping experience But personalisation is becoming, well, a lot more personal now...
One of our clients using personalisation via email is L’occiate, They had noticed that Customer engagement through email was declining. So to try and change this they looked to increase the relevancy of their email campaigns through smarter, more effective segmentation and thorough testingThey worked with Coremetrics using our LiveMail application which enables you to segment your data and target your emails to your audience based on specific rule. L’occitane saw amazing improvements with their click rates, conversion rates, and revenue per email message sent.They did a lot of testing around personalisation and then tested emails which contained a gift offer with purchase versus those that didn’tThe results were outstanding with a 2500% increase in revenue per email compared to unpersonalised emails.
So that’s all from me, before we go to questions, please take a note of our Social sites. The IBM Coremetrics consultants are on these and we provide hints and tips for analysis, industry trends and our thoughts on these hot topics you’ve heard about today.
Oh and please dont forget to visit the IBM stand, we’re by the bar!
Synopsis: “Ever find yourself pulling your hair out trying to locate an image in a sea of thousands? Don’t you think it would be nice to preview a video on your iPad without a special plug-in, or even just have access to all your digital content on the go, so you are able to act fast if a client unexpectedly throws a “let’s see it now” lasso around your neck?”------------------------------------------------------------------------------------My name is Davin Kluttz and, at present, I work for Extensis in the United States.We’re a software company, headquartered in Portland, Oregon (on the west coast, between San Francisco and Seattle)We have a worldwide presence, including offices and distributors throughout the UK, Europe, Asia, North and South America.Enough about Extensis. Let’s talk about why I’m here and why we’re here…
First, why am I here?My background is in design and advertising, where I was fortunate enough to be a part of the massive changes, brought on by technology, that we’ve seen in print and publishing, the evolution of the web and social media, as well as rise of digital video for the web and mobile.Along the way, I’ve always had a passion and curiosity for software solutions in these areas, especially areas we try to harness the most out of digital workflows.I’ve been fortunate enough to work for Extensis for the last 11 years, where our mission has been to bring order to this (sometimes) chaos and find new ways for individuals and workgroups to improve efficiency and create new opportunities. It’s something I am very passionate about and I am lucky to work with people around the world that like solving problems with software.
So, why are you here?Hopefully you came to learn about Digital Asset Management and not why “DAM” was misspelled.This is not a software demo – If you want to know about Extensis software, come to our booth.This is a chance to learn, so it’s a conversation…I want to explain the concept of Digital Asset Management and how it can be leveraged to find, archive and improveaccess to digital files.I want you to walk away with an understanding of how it can improve turnaround times and create opportunities to improve workflow and communication with your clients.Please feel free to ask questions at the end.
First we need to define what a digital asset is…An “asset”, as you probably recognize is a term borrowed from the world of finance.It’s basically and item of value.We’re talking about digital files; basically your project files or anything used to produce them.More specifically, these can come from a variety of sources, but they are the critical bits, without which, the work wouldn’t get done.Here’s a test: When is a file an asset?Purchased or licensedIt’s critical.Re-create or re-purchase, if it cannot be found.(Lost time, money)Definition: It’s only an asset if you can find it!In other words, if you cannot locate it, it’s of no value to you, or anyone else.So, doesn’t it make sense that we find a way to manage these?
Now that we’ve established what a digital asset is, I am going to take you through a list.This is a list of 5 fundamental concepts to you understand DAM, so you can:Figure out if you need DAMDetermine how you might use it in your day-to-day businessAsk the right questions, within your companyBe informed, as you discover more about itI love lists, because they build excitement, so let’s get crackin’!
The first important concept is “search”.You know what it means to search for something and we’ve all used search tools on our computers and we’ve all used Google and other web tools.Who can tell me what’s different about how you search for your assets today? (Now that we know what an asset is.)More than likely, you’re being old-fashioned when it comes to search:Isolated searches are those performed from your own computer – When you search, you are generally targeting a single network fileserver, your personal drive, a disc or some other piece of media. If you use one or more online services to post files, you probably have to search those too. Maybe this problem is obvious, but let me summarize 3 points:Each location is isolated, so it takes time and you still may never find the original “asset”!Since you have no idea where it is, you have to wait for your search to scour the location and return the results… And it’s never “Google-fast”.Assuming you eventually find it, you’ve likely wasted time looking in 20 other places, first. (Maybe even multiple other people are searching!)We all know, you never find anything in the first place you look!The other problem is folder-based searches. Folders assume you have SOME idea of where it is and, while folders can help to filter or narrow results, there are two problems:You can only ever see the contents of one folder at a time, so you have to drill deeper.Your only other alternative is to search a different folder and now you’re back to the Isolated search problem.Let me underscore all of this, by saying, we have some real problems here, because beneath all of this, we’re only searching: Filenames and Folder Names.Can anyone tell me what’s wrong with that? (No one is consistent or thorough in this area.)I will say that computers have gotten fancy and can let you search for the contents (the actual words) in files. You can, of course, search by date and file type, etc. These are all just “extra filters” that insulate us somewhat from the problems I already said.So, what’s different about searching within a DAM?Everyone can go to one place to find everything, like the index for a set of encyclopedias: It’s centralized, so everyone knows where to go.It doesn’t matter where the originals reside – A good DAM can even help you locate digital files that have been archived.The other thing that’s super cool about DAM is our next concept: Metadata!
Concept #2 is MetadataA simple definition…Metadata can be specific…This can also include file properties like color, modification dates, who saved it, etc.A good DAM can help you collect and organize this metadata, so you can use it in your searches.Many companies using DAM will customize it to suit the needs of their business, so that the system uses “their language” and has search options that make sense to their users and customers.Ex. Find all of the images for this project with photos that have licenses on them, so I can review the usage rights.Ex. Show all the videos formatted for iPhone; Show those that are not yet converted, so I know what work needs to be done.Ex. Find all of the layouts that the client has not approved.Information like this can be stored in the DAM system, if you want.DAM systems can also save your metadata into the file, like a custom signature that can be read by anyone. (Ex. Copyright Notice.)
Number 3 is Preview…Once we have metadata to help us search, there’s no guarantee we will find the exact asset we are looking for…In fact, maybe we don’t want to find “one file”. Perhaps you want to review a photo shoot or all of last years presentations.Quiz Time…Answer: You need all of those applications on your computer (or access to someone who does, which takes away their time!)You also need a lot of time to open and close each file, if you are trying to find the right one. (And a notepad to mark the ones you want.)DAM can preview anything:Nothing to install – How many of you know someone who has an expensive “pro” app like Photoshop, just so they can open and view or print images?Video applications and design applications are even more expensive and cumbersome, if viewing is all you need to do.While you are previewing, most DAM systems will give you a way to enter more metadata to note decision points or approve items.(Tell a story here, if time.)
There’s a problem with sharing something you know much more about than others: It’s too overwhelming for people outside your team or those “not on the project”.Sometimes you need to share the things that I’ve been talking about. Can you share some examples?Ex. Anyone ever been asked to let a client see some images or design variations to approve? Did you make a PDF and email it, or make some JPEGs and send them?Ex. Some marketing groups I have worked with, have some “preferred photos” that they want people in other departments to use; They use DAM as a way to share those.Who do you need to “share” with?Clients?Focus groups?Other departments?How can you share?Web sites?Social media?PDFs?Over coffee (or tea?) – Tablet example
Our 5th concept is Derivatives!Don’t worry, I am not going to get into fancy mathematics, nor are we going to crash the economy!We often forget we’re the experts…Keep in mind, many users don’t have (or know how to use) tools you have: Photoshop, for example.Most creative users spend time servicing internal requests, including other departments to convert files from one format to another:This represents an enormous amount of time (and costly interruptions) – Think about how often your users struggle with requests like this:Can I get these formatted for PowerPoint?We need to take the final images and save them all to PNGs and JPEGs for the web site. (At 3 different sizes for mobile, iPhone and Tablets.)The Client needs RGB versions of these, NOW!Can you make a PDF of these images, so I can show the client?I have a video in Windows Media format, but we need it in MPEG.All of these require special tools, like Photoshop, Acrobat Pro, Video applications or perhaps even custom programming.In addition, many of these things will occupy a user’s workstation for hours!It doesn’t have to be this way.DAM can help you maintain a single “master” file and create what users need, on-demand.Less duplication. Less storage.Self-service.Reduced turnaround time.Better communication
Thank you for your time.I would like to thank everyone for attending. I can answer any questions you have afterward or you can stop by our booth.Here are some resources you can check out, if you want to know more:The DAM Learning Center picks up where I left off with some helpful topics that delve deeper into these concepts.Also the Extensis web site has videos and trial downloads for Portfolio, our own DAM product.