What do you think everyone will be using (online) and talking about in 2011?

December 14th, 2010 Claire Sully

“What do you think will be big online in the New Year? Will Twitter be the new Facebook? Or will a new service emerge and capture our attention? What will the new hot gadget be? Will everyone replace their laptops with the newest smart phones and tablets, or will a different gadget enter the market? What do you think everyone will be using and talking about in 2011?”

I welcome the continuing shift in thinking and understanding of social media. In 2011, it will be not so much about the “social media stars” and gurus, who tell us how it all “works”, but more about what social media enables.

The focus on technology for technology’s sake is losing the battle and emerging, via the democratisation of technology  (and with the ability users have to leapfrog technological developments) is the means to produce community-based, demand-led ideas and uses of the technology that benefit people.

This was demonstrated brilliantly at the Connecting Bristol showcase event I attended this week at the Watershed.  We were given an update on the projects that Connecting Bristol had helped flourish.

Knowle Media West and Pervasive Media talked about what they do.  Connecting Bristol stayed firmly in the background, while we learnt about local community projects,  including accessible technology training that was really changing lives for the better, giving individuals a voice, opening up new possibilities for people, increasing confidence.  An example was given of how a group of OAPs saved their vital  lifeline – a bus route on their estate – because they simply had a voice and technology enabled them to be heard.

We saw work that the space and ethos at the Pervasive Media Studio had helped to produce, simply by enabling a cluster of creative technologists and giving them a space to grow their ideas, see Antivj for instance and read about the work of Dan Dixon.

The conversations and arguments about technology platforms will become less relevant, we won’t be hearing so much excitement around choosing a  technology platform (Bristol City Council), but more on how the online facilities enabled Bristol City Council to meet the challenge of doing more for less (money) for its people in supporting local communities with its services.

Knowing that the head of Bristol City Council spent 2 hours at the Connecting Bristol’s event, on the day she was going to hear news on her shrinking budget, tells you that Bristol City Council does get the point really.

One speaker mentioned that he asked a taxi driver on his way to the Watershed if they had heard of Connecting Bristol, the taxi driver hadn’t.  Not quite the correct question I believe, I’m sure if he had asked the taxi driver if he had heard of Knowle West Media Centre and/or Pervasive Media Studio, he may have heard something quite different.

Posted in Social Media, Web Trends | No Comments »

What do you think will be big online in the 2011?

December 14th, 2010 Oliver Ward

In response to a question posed by Connecting Somerset:

“What do you think will be big online in the New Year? Will Twitter be the new Facebook? Or will a new service emerge and capture our attention? What will the new hot gadget be? Will everyone replace their laptops with the newest smart phones and tablets, or will a different gadget enter the market? What do you think everyone will be using and talking about in 2011?”

Social Media in 2011

Social media will become increasingly relevant, changing the way we work, learn and play, as David Cushman says “2011 is going to be the year when making/creating/doing with social media begins to gain the ascendency over messaging/using people as a channel.”. More social media services will launch, to clutter the ever busier bar of buttons beneath blog articles. The best will have to fight to stay relevant. Expect to see more location-based services too, like FourSquare.

Browsers and HTML5 in 2011

Image credit: John Martz @ RobotJohnny.com

The new browser wars (browser war 2.0?) will see additions of new features from HTML5 into the offerings from Google, Apple and Firefox, each vying for the title ‘most up-to-date’. The real battle will be over performance, with the web using evermore Javascript even Microsoft’s Internet Explorer will be going on a diet, with the release of its Internet Explorer 9. All of this will be great for users with a faster, more stable web experience.

iPad, Tablets and Beyond in 2011

The iPad has been one of the hottest gadgets of 2010, with 8.5 million sold since its launch in April. 2011 will see a lot of manufacturers releasing their own versions, but with a new, cheaper model expected to be released by Apple in early 2011 it’ll be interesting to see who ships more units. The key here is that the competition will mean better features, and lower prices for the consumer.

We may even see an entirely new type of device with manufacturers exploring new designs and functionality, such as the Dell Inspiron Duo with its innovative flip screen leading to a device which is both a laptop, and a tablet. I expect we’ll see other creative solutions to fill the entire spectrum between a laptop and a tablet in the coming year, and an increased muddying of the distinction between smartphones, tablets, netbooks, and notebooks.

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Snow boarding at HorseWorld

December 2nd, 2010 John Brunsdon

Our shiny new advertising board is now on display at HorseWorld in Bristol – set off nicely by the recent snowfall!

We’ve worked with the charity for a number of years now and wanted to advertise our work with them to visitors to their attraction – as well as supporting a client we’ve enjoyed working with.

We think it looks rather fetching in the snow – and well worth seeing if you’re looking for something to do in the Christmas holidays (of course you can also see the animals, run around in the play barn and straw den, enjoy the aerial runway, take part in workshops, visit the museum and the other fun things at the visitor centre while you’re there!)

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Resistance is futile – how the Social Media revolution overthrew your website

October 25th, 2010 John Brunsdon

Social Media RevolutionThe world’s biggest annual social media survey has just been published, and it shows that, for charities, the tipping point in the communication revolution has now been reached.

Among the figures the Wave survey – published by ad agency Universal McCann* – throws up are these:

  • Over the last two years, the proportion of Net users visiting brand sites has dropped 10% (down to 74%)
  • Over the last year, the proportion of Net users connecting with a brand in social networks has increased 20% (to 30%)
  • Just under 50% of people have joined an online brand community

Brand? That means you. It means any organisation that seeks to create a community of engaged and connected followers. For businesses, it means potential or actual customers – for charities, it means potential or actual supporters.

It’s the end of the WWWorld as we know it

What do these figures mean? Along with all the other figures showing the sheer scale of social media engagement, they mean that your website has stopped being the centre of your online world.

For most charities and businesses, their web presence has been defined by their website. It’s where the “brand” lives online, how they communicate online, where they point people to for information – it’s the “official” web presence of the charity.

All that is about to change – in fact, it already has. The web is no longer about sites, its about content. Content doesn’t live on a site, it lives online – in social media, in tweets, on Facebook, emailed between friends, mentioned, social bookmarked.

Conversation not destination

It is no longer enough to concentrate your online marketing around your website, with perhaps a cursory nod to Twitter or Facebook. Your charity no longer exists online as a destination, but as a conversation.

Social Media is becoming the first place that people will find you online. It’s becoming the place where they will donate, fundraise, discuss you, support you, engage with you.

The way people use the web is changing radically – Social Media is intrinsically wound up in the way people move around online. They can Like content in Facebook without being on the Facebook site. They can sign into discussions via social sign-in, or write or comment on blogs. They can follow discussions and topics on Twitter. The revolution is being televised – on YouTube, which has become the second biggest search platform after Google.

Increasingly, they’ll stop searching for you online, and instead you – and the issues that matter to your charity – will find them.

All this is breaking down the walls that kept content – and brand – tied to a single website.

Not an option

Social Media is no longer an add-on, or an option, or a means of driving traffic to your site. It is your site – it’s everyone’s site.

When you are thinking about your website you now need to think of your web presence – the way you engage online is changing, and so must the roles of the people in your organisation that support your website.

Just like you did for your website, you need a strategy for social media engagement that directly supports your organisation’s aims. You need measurable goals, and people to ensure that those goals are met. As much as anything, you need a change of mindset away from having a website manager or team and towards having an online engagement team.

10 years ago, there were still charities that didn’t have a website. Now, no serious charity would be without one. In a lot shorter time than that, no serious charity will be without a web presence that has social media at its heart.

* apologies for those of you who clicked the link to UniversalMcCann – yes that really is the world’s most unusable site

Posted in Social Media, Web Marketing for Charities | No Comments »

Global Browser Usage Analysed

October 14th, 2010 Oliver Ward

All graphs from Stat Counter’s fantastic tool.

Although not the most exciting topic, analysis of browser usage isn’t purely academic, it is not only important to web designers and developers, who have to ensure their websites work for as many people as possible. The trends make a big difference to how everybody uses the web. Changes in browser technologies to embrace emerging technologies mean that to make the most of the web that older, legacy browsers need to be abandoned.

It can be a “chicken or the egg” situation, web designers can’t use new technologies until most browsers can support them, and users often won’t update unless there is functionality they are missing out on, due to having an old browser, HTML5 being a good example.

Google Chrome

With major version releases (3.0, 4.0, 5.0) every 3 or 4 months Google Chrome is a rapidly developing, cutting-edge browser, featuring the latest in browser features, rendering engine technology and Javascript acceleration.

With each new version almost all users are updated within a month. Google Chrome automatically downloads and installs updates if they are available, a feature which is rather hard to turn off. This does have the advantage that users of Google Chrome will always be using the most up-to-date version of the browser available, with bugs and security holes constantly fixed. It will also mean that the user will have the richest web experience available to them; if Google Chrome provides the feature they will have access to it.

Interesting in this trend is version inflection, whereby the relationship between the new version and outgoing version is almost a mirror image, reflected in the plane between the axis and the total browser usage trend (see light blue line).

The overall trend (pink line) is that Google Chrome is increasing its user base at a steady rate, with usage more than doubling in less than a year (3.86% Oct 2009 – 10.02% Aug 2010). Unsurprising considering Google has access to 91.4 % of the search engine users and a unique market position to get its browser to people.

Mozilla Firefox

Firefox has longer release cycles, often with minor revisions between major releases (3.5.13, 3.6.10). Updates are not automatic, although the user is prompted to update, either by updating directly in-browser, or by being linked to download a new version, as happened with 3.5. This means uptake of new versions is slower, taking 3 or 4 months for usage to surpass that of the previous version.

The version inflection of Firefox is a more complex, in large part due to FF 3.0, 3.5 and 3.6 all having significant usage until recently. There is a clear inflection trend between FF 3.0 and FF 3.5, until the release of FF 3.6. At this point there is a clear inflection trend between FF 3.5 and FF 3.6.

The overall trend for Firefox is that the browser is gaining no ground, with uptake pretty much level.

Internet Explorer

By comparison Internet Explorer (IE) release cycles are practically glacial. Internet Explorer 6, the lowest version number still with significant usage, was released in August 2001, with IE 7 released over 5 years later (October 2006), and, the current most popular, IE 8 some 2.5 years after that (March 2009).

While it has often been pointed out that IE 6 just won’t die, due mainly to its use by so many large businesses and public sector organisations, it is quite remarkable, and frustrating, that IE 6 still has such high usage after 9 years! The main problem here is that with so long between IE 6 and IE 7 (5 years), and one of the biggest uptakes in business usage of computers, that a lot of intranet websites were built to be viewed through IE 6. This in addition to the fact that IE 6 is not standards compliant means that any update to a browser that would display these systems ‘properly’ would in fact break the pages. In addition to IT departments simply not wanting to take on the risk, and headaches, of upgrading browsers across large networks. With Microsoft continuing support for IE 6 until April 8 2014, it’s not going to go away for some time yet.

Internet Explorer’s version inflection seems to indicate direct replacement of IE 7 for IE 8. Internet Explorer 6 abandonment doesn’t seem to play a large part in the rise of IE 8, suggesting that those users are moving to other browsers, perhaps due to running pirated version of Windows XP, preventing them from updating to IE7 or 8. These users would instead move to Google Chrome, Firefox or Safari for Windows.

Overall

Although IE 6 and 7 are (slowly) on their way out, being largely replaced by IE, it would seem that a significant part of users of IE are defecting to Google Chrome and Safari, the latter’s rise being related to the uptake of iPhones, iTouches and iPads, which all use a version of the Safari web browser.

Overall Firefox usage has levelled out, hovering around 30% of all browsers. It would seem that this has come about with the appearance of Google Chrome on the scene. Firefox users have traditionally been a more tech savvy group, who’s defection from security-flaw ridden Internet Explorer fueled Firefox’s rise until mid-2008 with Google Chrome’s release. These users will be more aware of the advantages of lightweight, and fast, Chrome, and feel less emotionally invested in any browser in particular.

The abandonment of Internet Explorer for Chrome isn’t surprising, a large number of these users will be less computer savvy, one reason they have stayed with IE up until now. With the ‘buzz’ about a browser from big name Google, as well as Google’s unique market position, which provides a way of leveraging the comes-installed IE browser off the default browser spot on Windows computers.

Disclaimer 1: I am a Firefox user, in large part due to its invaluable developer tools and add-ons, in addition to being one of the best browsers for my operating system, Ubuntu Linux. I am also, inherent in being a web designer/developer, an opponent of Internet Explorer.

Disclaimer 2: Browser usage, or indeed any web usage stats, are by no means precise. They will vary based on audience (Wired.com vs. The National Trust), geographical region (country to country, or even region of the same country), and time of day (work vs. home computer). In addition some browser will ’spoof’ their user agent and report to be something which they are not.

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Posted in Web Trends | 2 Comments »

Social Media Training for Charities

October 8th, 2010 John Brunsdon

Tickbox Marketing are marketing and web specialists for charities and the arts. 

We regularly run marketing and web strategy planning, training and implementation workshops for our charity clients.

On the 28th of November we will be hosting a taster workshop at our Bristol offices for local charities. 

The workshop will cover:

  • Charity user engagement strategies
  • Which social media tools will work for you
  • How to measure resource allocation to drive your social media marketing
  • How to … guides for Twitter, Facebook and other social media apps

This will be a practical hands-on workshop and will enable you to evaluate or plan your social media marketing strategy for your charity, give you some practical tips on using the technology as well as looking at best practice and latest research in charity marketing.

Date: 28th of November
Venue: St Brandon House, 29 Great George Street, Bristol, BS1 5QT
Times: 10am to 1pm
Cost: £90 + vat

Lunch and refreshments provided

Please book in the first instance by e-mailing: training@tickboxmarketing.co.uk or call 0117 325 0091.

Numbers are limited due to our policy of holding smaller workshops to enable a more intensive learning experience for the delegate.

Posted in Social Media, Training courses & workshops | No Comments »

BCCweb – it’s about people not platforms

September 13th, 2010 John Brunsdon

While it’s been fascinating to see the talk among Bristol’s developer community following the roundtable on Bristol City Council’s Future Web Platform, there does seem to be an element of discussion around the project that is conspicuous by it’s abscence – the end user.

For those not familiar with the project – BCC are commendably taking opinion from Bristol’s digital community on the re-development of the council’s website.

We attended the roundtable last week, and discussion there – and online – since has centered around the arguments for and against the whole gammut of open-source platforms and technologies.

This is a little like architects arguing over the construction materials for a building before finding out what the building is going to be used for. The danger is, you design and build a wonderfully constructed office block when the client wanted a car park.

Doing Stuff

The council has produced a reasonably detailed requirements document – but there is nothing in there that suggests any robust measure of end user needs has been identified, or that suggested functionality has been evidenced against any user needs.

A massive investment in time and resources is being put into identifying and developing a platform before anyone knows what the platform needs to deliver for the people using it.

We risk getting bogged down in a discussion about the most “appropriate” platform before answering the most important question – “appropriate” for whom?

For instance, a lot of the discussion at the roundtable centred around migrating content. But what if the content is part of the problem? There was little or no discussion about content planning, Information Architecture, usability or the end user.

These are the elements that need to be understood first – before any decision on platforms is made. Not least, because they will – or should – be the determining factor in the functionality of the site.

The website needs to do stuff for people who live in Bristol. This “stuff” is the reason for the existence of the site, the technology is simply there to enable this stuff to be done. The CMS is the servant of the project, not the master.

Different platform, same issues

Back in 2007, we carried out an information architecture and usability review of the Bristol City Council Intranet. The issues we discovered with the site largely centred around poor information architecture, out of date and unreliable content, poor search and lack of user customisation functionality.

We’ve just carried out a (rather unscientific) user review of the BCC website and guess what the main issues identified by our user group were? Yup – IA, unreliable content, poor search, no customisation.

No technology solution is going to address the issue of poor content, no customisation functionality is going to understand how people living in Bristol want to customise their site. These are all planning issues.

We were able to deliver a 700% increase in engagement with target areas of the BCC Intranet by making changes to the IA, content and layout of key pages.

The technology didn’t come into it – we had to work within the constraints of the existing intranet platform. Getting a thorough understanding of what staff at the council actually really wanted to be able to do on the intranet did.

However, we also identified that had we been able to change the intranet platform to a more suitable one, we could have made even greater progress.

When we carried out our work on the BCC intranet, we ended our consultancy by discussing the imminent upgrade of the council’s website. Our key recommendation – don’t go out and buy an expensive off-the-shelf CMS and try to shoe-horn your user’s requirements into it, start with the requirements and develop a CMS to match them.

Three years later, we’re sticking to that.

Posted in Planning | 5 Comments »

WWT Photography Competition site launched

July 29th, 2010 John Brunsdon

Our first project with the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust has just launched – a mini-site for their annual photography competition wwwt.org.uk/photo

The social media-friendly site allows users to upload their photographs, vote, email and link images with Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.

The WWT Photography Competition aims to find the best wildlife and scenery photographs taken at any of the 9 WWT centres around the UK, including the famous Slimbridge reserve in Gloucestershire.

The mini-site is the first of a number of projects we are undertaking with WWT

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Latest Project: Somerset Coastal Change Pathfinder

July 26th, 2010 John Brunsdon

Tickbox have been commissioned to develop this important public-engagement website highlighting the impact of coastal change on Somerset communities.

We are creating a site which will provide information and an online meeting place for communities on the Somerset Coast directly affected by erosion and rising sea-levels.

It is a challenging site, with a very tight deadline, and is calling on a range of skills from complex information architecture planning, to copywriting, SEO and social media engagement.

We’re working on some creative ways to get across what is a complex and occasionally controversial subject in ways that engage, inform and inspire ordinary people to get involved in an issue that will have a significant impact on their communities.

Phase 2 of the project is now live: www.somersetcoastalchange.org.uk

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The Tender Trap

June 18th, 2010 John Brunsdon

What do you do if you are invited to respond to a tender and the company who put it together has got it all wrong?

It’s a tricky question – but one that comes up time and again when it comes to web development.

We recently received a tender brief for redeveloping a website for a South West organisation that immediately raised alarm bells. While the marketing team involved obviously had a clear idea of the issues they needed to address, the proposed solutions set out in the brief were going to cause them as many problems as they solved.

They specifically requested that the tender should reflect a proposed development structure – unfortunately, one where we could see that much of the development work would be duplicated, and key design information architecture work would be carried out after the CMS to support them was built, with potentially serious consequences for usability.

In this kind of situation, we are always faced with the dilemma of whether to simply respond to what the company is asking for in the way they requested, or to let them know our concerns and respond with a proposal to work the way we know is best.

In this case, we decided the best course of action would be to talk to the people who put the tender together and express our concerns that they risked compromising their project – and spending more than they needed to – if the project went ahead as they suggested.

Thankfully, the people we spoke to understood our point straight away and were happy to hear constructive suggestions about their project.

The problem for businesses putting together web tenders is that web development is a mix of different disciplines – it’s part marketing and part web design, you need expertise in both to make it work.

Marketing teams will understand their marketing aims and what the want the site to achieve for them, but often have limited knowledge of the actual technical processes of building a site.

Similarly, pure web design companies will know how the technology works but not how it can best support a businesses marketing aims.

We always recommend that when putting together a web tender, companies should take advice not only from the people in their organisation responsible for marketing but also from people who understand the nuts and bolts of web development. Ideally, both should work together – not just on the tender, but on the whole web marketing strategy.

Not every organisation will get the people they invited to tender picking up on issues with their brief – often, understandably, web companies just aim to meet the brief they have been given.

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