discussing web services

It’s perhaps time for us to lay down what ‘web services’ are for developers, as in itself, the web provides a multitude of services. One of our very own web developers, Will has taken on this task in an article originally posted at the red ant community area of our website.

It’s a pretty great article to describe what a developer/programmer/engineer is talking about when they discuss web services, and we’d thoroughly recommend that to anyone. As a taster, these are few comments that Will has made;

web services are a means for one application to talk to another, or a sort of Internet form of communication that allows different platforms – written in whatever language – the ability to converse and share information.

In order for applications on the Internet to freely exchange information we need an open protocol that can be interpreted and implemented easily by many different systems.  HTTP, the underlying protocol of the humble web browser fits these criteria. Web services, SOAP and REST it goes without saying fall into the realm of geekery that are unlikely ever to require the average website owners attention.

If you want to see and read more, Wills full article that fully describes what web services are is found in the community/blog area of the red ant site. You cannot post comments there, however, we’ll happily enter into discussion here!

designing with icons

We know that we have a lot of opinions on accessibility and usability, and just in general producing a website that will not treat visitors to an experience that makes the house of horrors seem like a picnic, but until it stops, we’re not going to!

From design to development and through to planning and executing a digital marketing strategy, every ant thinks about how the person viewing and using our work will react to it. Our goal is to provide our clients with a website that attracts traffic and retains visitors because it provides a positive user experience. One of the key points that we address and consider is accessibility.

Fitz takes up the designing for accessibility torch in the following excerpt from a published article about the use of icons in web design;

The use of icons are not only used to make the interface look “pretty” they are used for usability. A site interface should be intuitive and by using icons to represent what the action will do this makes us think less, perfect!

If it’s not broken don’t try and fix it. There are icons which have a meaning associated with them. Examples such as an envelope implies email or sending a message and a magnifying glass is to search… A basket or bag are used to store your virtual goods, then you proceed through the checkout to pay.

All this is familiar to every one of us, however purchasing goods online is very different to physically doing so. AGFG is a woman’s clothing retailer and using a bag instead of a basket make sense. Adding more items changes the icon from one bag up to an icon with three. From personal experience of going shopping with my fiancée I know the feeling of lots of bags, I’m glad these are virtual!

There can be a negative impact of using icons and that is if the user doesn’t understand what it is or what it does.

You can read the full article over at our main website, but this was a short excerpt from Fitz’s article Web design and usability – Keeping it real. We’d like to take this moment to wish him well with carrying his fiancees shopping bags.

Planning Time for Social Engagement

In Dan’s recent blog post digital consulting and digital strategy he highlights the need to plan for success and to be able to support digital campaigns; as part of many digital strategies the same holds true for social engagement. Andy Budd recently tweeted much the same sentiment:

“Social media marketing is like alcoholism. Getting that initial buzz is easy but keeping it going takes time and effort!”

Having an understanding of the amount of effort required to maintain a social engagement programme is clearly something that is key to digital consultancy. In the remainder of this post there are a few pointers on how to estimate the level of time required on a weekly basis to run and support a social engagement program. These pointers combine to build a simple spreadsheet model that can be used to plan and evaluate.

How will you use social engagement?

The first steps in planning the time required for social engagement is to list out which social networking channels you will be using as part of your digital strategy. Some channels and simple ideas are contained in my blog entry on social engagement. When listing the social networking channels aim to note down each social networking activity as a channel. So you may have a Facebook fan page, but you may use a number of applications on these, complete your list to the granularity of each application you are using as part of your digital strategy. To make it clear it is worthwhile noting the aims of each channel.

How proactive do you intend to be?

Within the social engagement part of your digital strategy how much content is being written / seeded per week? If you have a blog and/or Twitter account how often are you going to write blog posts or tweet new information. Each of these takes time and needs to be accounted for. In the spreadsheet list the social networking channels, how many times per week you intend to post to each channel and how long an individual post takes in minutes. Multiple the first by the second to get the time per week you expect to spend seeding each of your social networking channels.

How engaging will you need to be?

Social engagement is just that, engagement; you cannot start along a digital strategy of social engagement and not take the time out to engage your audience. Not all audience posts will be positive, there may need to be a degree of moderation. Some engagement will also require research to respond. Each social networking channel will also have by its very nature a degree of expected participation by an active member of your audience.

Within the spreadsheet place the columns social networking channel, participation, moderation, response time and response rate. Under participation for each social networking channel note how many posts an active user will post a week. Under moderation place the values 1 for proactive moderation (every post is moderated), 5 for reactive moderation (posts go live, but may then be removed after an administrator has reviewed them all), and 10 for community reactive moderation (members of the audience report on posts that may not be appropriate). Response time and response rate should be completed for the estimated time it will take to deal with an average post and as a percentage the amount of average posts that will require a response from the social networking channel.

Once completed the time taken per active member of your audience per week can be calculated:

(Participation/moderation) + (participation* response rate * response time)

The participation / moderation part of this calculation uses the estimate that each moderated post will take approximately 1 minute, please feel free to adjust for your moderation methods.

Define your audience

Each different social networking channel within your digital strategy will have its unique audience characteristics. For each channel note down the expected size of audience, the percentage of the audience that is expected to be active weekly and the human factor.

The human factor defines how much additional work may result from that audience, e.g. malicious posts etc. For the human factor place one if the audience is expected to result in a typical amount of work, lower the factor if the audience is expected to be easier and raise it if the audience is expected to be more difficult.

The human factor, size of audience and expected audience participation can then be multiplied by each other to generate a metric by which the channel audience can be rated.

Summing up

To calculate the weekly management time required for the social engagement section of a digital strategy the final step is for each social networking channel use the following calculation:

Proactive Engagement + (Audience Metric * Reactive Engagement)

Actual time spent to estimated time spent will of course differ over the time of the social strategy, but the above should be a good starting point.

This blog entry was written by Paul Bidder.

Digital Consultancy and Digital Strategy

This year aligned to expected interest the main theme of our Internet World presentations and literature was Social Engagement, just one of the areas that Red Ant consults in. Whilst more can be read about Social Engagement in Pauls blog post on Social Engagement on talking to people at the stand the theme inevitably turned towards the wider digital consultancy and digital strategy that Red Ant performs for our clients, sometimes even along the theme of what digital consultancy consists of. Through the remainder of this post I will attempt to cover areas of digital consultancy and areas that I believe marketing departments should be considering for their digital strategy.

Digital Consultancy

Digital Consultancy in short is about finding the best way of achieving goals, normally promoting a brand or service, through electronic connected media. This could be online on the web, through specialist Internet applications or through mobile phones (both network and Bluetooth connections). Digital consultancy also can tie into traditional media outlets either as traditional first bringing an audience into a digital campaign or traditional last by using an existing digital audience as content generators. As is the case all consultancy Red Ants approach to digital consultancy and building digital strategies is tailors to each of our clients, however there are some key requirements and steps that cross over all campaigns.

• Know the aim
• Know the brand / client
• Know the audience
• Know the tools and be clear in their limitations
• Plan how to measure return (KPIs), and expected return
• Plan how you will support your strategy
• Deliver, measure and repeat

All of these are simple, but necessary steps to delivering a well constructed campaign.

Digital Strategy Aims

Discussing aims with clients are often the first barrier we come across. The part that we find clients normally find the hardest is knowing what is achievable and in defining initial digital strategy aims they are normally either very generic e.g. we want to do something social, or they are detailed to the point of being limited by the initial vision. Aims on any digital strategy should be first and foremost business goals and limitations. Goals normally include increased awareness, building an audience and / or educating that audience, increasing reputation, but ultimately making the sale. Limitations generally consist of conflict of interest with existing business practices and / or outlets, initial perception (both audience and reputation), and budget. Working with these goals and limitations digital consultants can start to build clear strategies to meet these aims.

Understanding brand

Before any meaningful digital strategy can be put in planned the brand must be understood inside and out. Misplaced brand identity within a digital campaign will at best lead to a misfiring digital campaign, at worst it can lead to long term damage for the brand in question. The message for any digital campaign must be on brand or at least on brand aspirations as defined in the aims of the strategy. Whilst a subjective viewpoint is all well and good living and breathing the brand will open up ideas for digital strategy that will take the brand to the next level.

Understanding the audience

Along with the brand the audience is a key factor in any digital strategy. It is particularly noticeable in brand reinvention that when the new brand message is not attuned to the audience the reinvented brand does not stay reinvented for long. Digital campaigns that have a message that is not aligned with the audience are weak, of limited value and like incorrect brand messages potentially damaging.

Understand what is capable

At Red Ant we encourage all of our Ants to take the time to learn new products, ideas and technologies. Only when they understand what is capable and are able to share the knowledge can we deliver digital strategies that are truly optimised and have that creative sparkle that stands out. We find that knowledge plus imagination delivers a plethora of ideas, invariably including those that are not on brand (but through education rarely those that aren’t on audience), but for every 99 ideas that do not make it passed initial brainstorm one is an absolute gem. However being ignorant of what can be done is an immediate limitation on what is possible and what will be delivered for the digital campaign.

KPIs and ROI

KPIs and ROI are discussed in detail in Richards blog post about an ROI and performance framework, but they are a key component in any digital strategy. Gone are the days that money can just be thrown at a project without proof of return, and without proof there can be no success.

Digital Campaign Support

An area that is often overlooked in digital consultancy until it is too late and to the detriment of the digital strategy is supporting the digital campaign. It is odd to be cautious of success, but planning for the success of a digital campaign is an essential element of ensuring the success of the digital campaign. If sales increase tenfold is the stock available, or easily acquirable, can the fulfilment be managed? If engagement with your consumer base has rapid uptake do you have the staff available to engage and potentially police areas of engagement? If your goal is to drive traffic to a website can that website handle large upswings in traffic? If you cannot meet the conversion of goals then the digital strategy will have failed and as per other areas this may have an adverse effect on brand, audience and future digital efforts.

Delivery

Red Ant has a team that delivers, but this falls outside of the remit of digital consultancy. What is important to remember is that no digital campaign should be treated in isolation. The measurement of existing digital campaigns is the yardstick and starting point for future digital strategy.

This blog post was written by Dan Mortimer.

SEO and making tea

Making the perfect cuppa is a formula to follow, pour boiling water over a tea bag in a cup. Stir, add milk, sugar, remove tea bag, stir once more and drink… but is it really?

That’s not how I make my tea, and it may not the way you make yours. Alongside a huge range of personal preferences, there are number of aspects of tea making to consider, mostly from tips to making the perfect cuppa that other people will have given that you have adopted over the years.

Approaching building a website and the search engine optimisation is very similar to making the perfect cup of tea, the basis of which is knowledge of what your audience likes and investment in the ability to provide that. I’ll go through a few scenarios of tips that I have had here and equate that to offerings for an almost perfect online experience.

1. Never buy cheap tea. Nine times out of ten, cheap tea bags make cheap tea and leave no satisfaction. Similarly, if you realise the tea that you have decided to buy on face value suddenly turns out to have a slightly bizarre taste, you now have a box of it sat there looking at you! Always get recommendations from other people before committing your business to a web project.
2. My fiancé has the smallest amount of milk in his tea, cannot decide if he wants 1 or 2 sugars and leaves the tea ‘to cool’ before I pour half of it away at the end of the night because it’s become ‘too cold’. He wants a full mug, not a smaller cup. If he would make up his mind how much sugar he needs and add a little cold water to his mug, it would be the right temperature and he would drink it all, not wasting any resources. Discuss your business need with your teams, the listen to your teams, listen to your colleagues and employees input and feedback, listen to your web project managers, listen to those who are able to deliver what your business needs, even though it may be not as you thought it should be done; they know how to deliver to your budget and maximise resources. At the end of the day, the better the end product, the better everyone feels about it, and the more benefit is reaped all round.
3. One of the designers here at Red Ant likes his tea weak, milky and very sugary; I like mine to be strong, with a dash of milk and the occasional half spoon of sugar. But we can still both stand in the kitchen and make tea for each other. So provide ingredients not only for your visitor, but also enough for their friends so that they can recommend your services to them. However, you do not have to provide services for everyone; we have English tea – no infusions to offer and regular coffee but no cappuccinos’. Sticking to the basics for our caffeine needs, but not getting too fancy because it is not the time or the place. We know our audience, we know if we want something a little extra we get it ourselves and we always return to our favourite staple diet of tea and gallons of it!
4. Many years ago, a friend named Craig told me off for putting the sugar and milk into the cup while the tea is brewing. Apparently the molecules of the milk stop the flavour from coming out of the teabag perforations. I needed to wait until the tea was brewed and ready to have milk and sugar added. So in terms of optimisation – don’t put everything in at once, watch, taste, learn, add, watch, taste, learn, add…
5. My very cool grandparents retain and store to compost their used tea; then granddad uses that compost to grow vegetables and give out to the family. His careful use of something that has already given him one thing and follow up means we all get some very tasty courgettes! Repeat visits are a great way to determine how successful you can become and brand evangelists are great to help grow your business. Perhaps each visitor should be treated in such a way that they are able to provide further enrichment back to another area of the business at another time of the year, or contacted to give some enrichment back to them in the form of loyalty vouchers. Their evangelism of your brand then becomes a great reputation for your company.
6. My cousin Simon came to live with us for a while and displayed what can only be described as tea dictator traits. One of which was the day he told me off for squishing the water out of the bag before I took it out – apparently that makes the tea bitter. Gentle infusion is key to a harmonious relationship, and treating the infuser gently when removing it means the experience is less harsh for all. I guess that this is an example of providing a great experience, and customer service. Provide good follow up and treat even the smallest sale as your biggest client for a great reputation and lots of word of mouth/social exposure.

Now you know how I like my tea – and my websites – why not make me a cup of tea that I’ll like and build me a website that makes me want to come back, or even purchase from!

This blog post was written by Sarah