Nov
17
In our daily lives we experience many different kinds of user interfaces. Some experiences are effortless and go unnoticed, while others are exciting or even frustrating. When creating a user interface the designer must be aware of the experience that is being created and the reflection that it will have on the brand the interaction is related to. Common sense would dictate that the goal of a user experience designer would be to make the user interface as transparent as possible. There is a problem with transparency however, it lacks personality and therefore brand. Making First Impressions Let’s compare the
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Oct
10
Envano recently launched a re-designed version of our site: Envano.com and our main focus in re-designing the site was to make it mobile friendly. Mobile devices typically have slower internet connections than their desktop counterparts, and because of this, the overall size of a page needs to be smaller for mobile users. One of the best ways to reduce the size of a page is to use fewer images and external files. CSS Border Art One of the techniques used to reduce the number of images on a page is to use CSS borders. Borders can be used to create
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Oct
3
Why? When considering a Server-side language many think of the popular and common ones like PHP, Perl, or .NET, however, a new alternative has risen in popularity that allows the execution of JavaScript on the server-side and utilizes Google’s V8 JavaScript Engine. Essentially, it is a set of libraries on top of Google’s V8 and It is named node.js. The most intriguing feature of Node is in how it handles I/O threads. Their site states, “Node will show much better memory efficiency under high-loads than systems which allocate 2MB thread stacks for each connection.” The result of this is that
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Jun
16
More than half of consumers surveyed in May by Deloitte believe the economy is recovering while over 64% say their finances are the same or better than a year ago. Also, 63% say they plan to spend the same or more at retailers this year. Of special note, 75% say they go online to get store/product/price information before – or during – in-store shopping. 51% say an online review has impacted their purchase decision. “Consumers are tuning in to online conversations to make informed buying decisions and. . . interact with retailers,” said Stacy Janiak, U.S. Vice Chairman of Deloitte.
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Aug
10
Traditional media will be taking a hit over the next five years. According to Forrester Research, 60% of surveyed marketers indicated they are shifting resources from traditional media to interactive marketing. Direct mail is taking the biggest hit. On the flip side, spending on social media and mobile marketing will increase by 34% and 27% respectively. Online display advertising spending will increase by 17%. These increases are in spite of budgets that have been slashed by two-thirds from last year. Of note, Forrester analyst Shar VanBoskirk said, “Email marketing is having a banner year.” Marketers are able to expand their
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May
26
As e-commerce grows, many marketers are looking online to gain market share in a tough economy. According to “Retailing Online 2009″ (from Forrester Research and Shop.org), 46% are spending less on their online budgets while nearly 25% are spending more. 80% of those spending more are amplifying their search engine marketing (SEM) efforts while 65% are increasing email and 60% are boosting social marketing. In short, marketers are turning to SEM to find customers and to email to keep them. 89% said that email is the most successful tactic overall with 71% of retailers planning to target their emails using
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Feb
25
50% of consumers say they are more likely to purchase from companies (online and office) if they receive email from them. According to an Epsilon survey conducted by ROI research, permission-based email campaigns greatly impact purchasing behavior and consumer loyalty. Furthermore, one-third of the respondents indicated they visit sites directly instead of clicking on an email link and 67% said they purchased products offline after receiving email from a retail company. Epsilon’s SVP, Strategic Services said that study findings, “demonstrate the importance of email marketing as part of a multi-channel communication strategy.” Source: Email increases likelihood to buy by 50%
Oct
1
Captivating, Content, and Community are as important to interactive marketing as the three R’s are to education. The goal of interactive marketing is to captivate your current and potential customers. The best way to produce a captive customer is get them to want to be captive. The question is how do you get your customers to want to be held captive? In their recently published book, Get Content Get Customers, Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett explain providing content that makes a purchase decision easy enables a company to build a trusted relationship with current and future customers. This is accomplished
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Sep
13
What is tagging anyway? According to Daniel Terdiman, a staff writer for CNET News.com, it’s defined as “the searchable keywords the individuals can assign” to web content. This content usually consists of web pages or images. Tagging empowers the end user by providing a way for them to categorize information according to their own taxonomies. Much like a librarian does with books in a library. This process of tagging by an individual gives a site or services an added level of usability that an individual has never had before. Now the big question, why does it matter? A recently released
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