Saturday
Behavioral Targeting: Back to the Future?
By Pamela Parker
There I was, sitting in the slick '70s-style dining room at Manhattan's Brasserie, listening to the young entrepreneur describe his vision for his company. Surrounded by power-breakfasters wearing smart suits, despite August's drenching humidity, we talked about profile-based targeting across multiple sites, about building huge databases to store behavior-based user profiles, and about how the plan would allow advertisers to target relevant individuals like never before.
I felt like I was back in 1998. I almost asked the guy how much he was trying to raise in his next round of venture capital financing. Just another example of the way the industry seems to be going nowadays. Old (failed) ideas are being resurrected with new hope. They still sound great, but will they work this time around? Are they bad ideas, or was it just bad timing?
Remember DoubleClick's Intelligent Targeting and Boomerang products? They were supposed to build profiles and target ads based on user behavior. Intelligent Targeting was abandoned in December 2001. Executives explained, given market conditions, advertisers weren't willing to pay a premium for behavior-based targeting.
Then there was Engage, which touted itself as the originator of user profiles. Back in 2000, Engage said of its 70 million anonymous profiles:
These profiles contain rich, dynamic, anonymous behavior data that is processed based on: type of content viewed, the time spent viewing and the frequency and recency of visits to a particular interest category or site, all of which are based on 800 interest categories.
Engage, of course, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June. Its remaining assets were sold to JDA Software Group.
The Next Generation
Fast-forward to 2003. If you're a media buyer or a publisher, you've probably heard terms such as "behavioral profiling" and "audience management" trotted out again. You hear them in pitches from publishers such as the New York Times Digital or The Wall Street Journal Online. Or in pitches from technology vendors such as Tacoda Systems, Revenue Science (formerly digiMine), or AlmondNet. They may remind you, as they do me, of days gone by. But this latest crop of technology companies -- at least most of them -- are much more realistic about the state of the market and the tools' capabilities.
What these companies do, in simplest terms, is help publishers segment their audiences based on behavior on their sites. The Wall Street Journal Online, which is working with Revenue Science, offers advertisers segments such as "technology enthusiasts," "car buffs," "consumer techies," "engaged investors," "health nuts," and "travel seekers." The New York Times Digital, which developed a tool internally, offers "autos," "pharmaceuticals," "real estate," and "tech/telecom." It will soon offer "fashion," "dining and wine," and "home and garden."
The idea is advertisers buying, say, the "travel seekers" segment would reach the same people they would if they were to buy in the travel section, but impressions are delivered elsewhere. Of course, this allows publishers to charge a higher CPM in less desirable parts of their sites, as the people are identified as desirable.
"I don't believe that if the chairman of GM goes off to read the opera review that he's any less valuable than when he's in the auto section," said Randy Kilgore, WSJ.com's vice president of advertising, marketing, and sales.
That these technologies are emerging now and that publishers are starting to embrace them are good signs for the industry. They're signs the most desirable site sections are beginning to sell out. They're signs publishers are choosing different ways, other than simply adding smaller placements (i.e., clutter) to popular pages, to increase revenues.
The bad news is these tools may further complicate a problem that dogs publishers: inventory management. Key questions for publishers to ask themselves (and for media buyers to ask publishers) include:
How many times must people visit, say, the technology section, before they become "technology enthusiasts"?
How recent must those visits be, and when does someone get kicked out of a segment?
How do I make certain impressions are really there? If you're selling an impression for a technology enthusiast visiting the world news section, make sure that impression isn't already sold to an advertiser who wants to reach world news visitors.
There's a balance, of course, between quality and quantity. The more narrowly you define segments, the better the response you're likely to get. The downside is you'll have less inventory to offer. Juggling inventory to ensure each impression gets the highest value possible is another challenge.
In the Field
Behavioral profiling seems to be working for some publishers. Belo Interactive, which publishes DallasNews.com and uses software from Tacoda, released two case studies this week touting results.
In one, a local auto dealer targeted banners to people who had visited the automotive section of DallasNews.com in the past 30 days. The response rate (i.e., CTR) came in at 7.7 percent, tremendously higher than the industry average. Of calls to the dealership, 44 percent were attributed to the DallasNews.com campaign, at a time when eight promotions were running in other media.
In the second case study, a vacation broker credited behavior-targeted ads for increasing vacation bookings by 50 percent and boosting revenue 38 percent.
These are some of the only hard numbers to emerge from behavior-targeting players so far, but media buyers are testing, watching, and waiting for more.
"I think it's one of those things where we are still in the early stages," said Nick Pahade of Beyond Interactive.
Jeff Lanctot, Avenue A's vice president of media, says some of his clients are "dipping their toes in," but it's too early to tell what the results will be. "In general, I have a positive feeling about it," he said, "because I don't think I'm being sold a bill of goods by any means.... There's a level of granularity that the publishers can provide that I think can be really helpful."
A good sign for the future of this targeting technique is publishers seem to be taking a very realistic pricing approach. They charge a small premium in some cases, but not enough to discourage advertisers from trying something new. Revenue Science and AlmondNet have established revenue-sharing pricing models. They're incentivized to make the technology work for publishers and advertisers. Two big clues we're not reverting to 1999 or 2000.
What a relief!
There I was, sitting in the slick '70s-style dining room at Manhattan's Brasserie, listening to the young entrepreneur describe his vision for his company. Surrounded by power-breakfasters wearing smart suits, despite August's drenching humidity, we talked about profile-based targeting across multiple sites, about building huge databases to store behavior-based user profiles, and about how the plan would allow advertisers to target relevant individuals like never before.
I felt like I was back in 1998. I almost asked the guy how much he was trying to raise in his next round of venture capital financing. Just another example of the way the industry seems to be going nowadays. Old (failed) ideas are being resurrected with new hope. They still sound great, but will they work this time around? Are they bad ideas, or was it just bad timing?
Remember DoubleClick's Intelligent Targeting and Boomerang products? They were supposed to build profiles and target ads based on user behavior. Intelligent Targeting was abandoned in December 2001. Executives explained, given market conditions, advertisers weren't willing to pay a premium for behavior-based targeting.
Then there was Engage, which touted itself as the originator of user profiles. Back in 2000, Engage said of its 70 million anonymous profiles:
These profiles contain rich, dynamic, anonymous behavior data that is processed based on: type of content viewed, the time spent viewing and the frequency and recency of visits to a particular interest category or site, all of which are based on 800 interest categories.
Engage, of course, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June. Its remaining assets were sold to JDA Software Group.
The Next Generation
Fast-forward to 2003. If you're a media buyer or a publisher, you've probably heard terms such as "behavioral profiling" and "audience management" trotted out again. You hear them in pitches from publishers such as the New York Times Digital or The Wall Street Journal Online. Or in pitches from technology vendors such as Tacoda Systems, Revenue Science (formerly digiMine), or AlmondNet. They may remind you, as they do me, of days gone by. But this latest crop of technology companies -- at least most of them -- are much more realistic about the state of the market and the tools' capabilities.
What these companies do, in simplest terms, is help publishers segment their audiences based on behavior on their sites. The Wall Street Journal Online, which is working with Revenue Science, offers advertisers segments such as "technology enthusiasts," "car buffs," "consumer techies," "engaged investors," "health nuts," and "travel seekers." The New York Times Digital, which developed a tool internally, offers "autos," "pharmaceuticals," "real estate," and "tech/telecom." It will soon offer "fashion," "dining and wine," and "home and garden."
The idea is advertisers buying, say, the "travel seekers" segment would reach the same people they would if they were to buy in the travel section, but impressions are delivered elsewhere. Of course, this allows publishers to charge a higher CPM in less desirable parts of their sites, as the people are identified as desirable.
"I don't believe that if the chairman of GM goes off to read the opera review that he's any less valuable than when he's in the auto section," said Randy Kilgore, WSJ.com's vice president of advertising, marketing, and sales.
That these technologies are emerging now and that publishers are starting to embrace them are good signs for the industry. They're signs the most desirable site sections are beginning to sell out. They're signs publishers are choosing different ways, other than simply adding smaller placements (i.e., clutter) to popular pages, to increase revenues.
The bad news is these tools may further complicate a problem that dogs publishers: inventory management. Key questions for publishers to ask themselves (and for media buyers to ask publishers) include:
How many times must people visit, say, the technology section, before they become "technology enthusiasts"?
How recent must those visits be, and when does someone get kicked out of a segment?
How do I make certain impressions are really there? If you're selling an impression for a technology enthusiast visiting the world news section, make sure that impression isn't already sold to an advertiser who wants to reach world news visitors.
There's a balance, of course, between quality and quantity. The more narrowly you define segments, the better the response you're likely to get. The downside is you'll have less inventory to offer. Juggling inventory to ensure each impression gets the highest value possible is another challenge.
In the Field
Behavioral profiling seems to be working for some publishers. Belo Interactive, which publishes DallasNews.com and uses software from Tacoda, released two case studies this week touting results.
In one, a local auto dealer targeted banners to people who had visited the automotive section of DallasNews.com in the past 30 days. The response rate (i.e., CTR) came in at 7.7 percent, tremendously higher than the industry average. Of calls to the dealership, 44 percent were attributed to the DallasNews.com campaign, at a time when eight promotions were running in other media.
In the second case study, a vacation broker credited behavior-targeted ads for increasing vacation bookings by 50 percent and boosting revenue 38 percent.
These are some of the only hard numbers to emerge from behavior-targeting players so far, but media buyers are testing, watching, and waiting for more.
"I think it's one of those things where we are still in the early stages," said Nick Pahade of Beyond Interactive.
Jeff Lanctot, Avenue A's vice president of media, says some of his clients are "dipping their toes in," but it's too early to tell what the results will be. "In general, I have a positive feeling about it," he said, "because I don't think I'm being sold a bill of goods by any means.... There's a level of granularity that the publishers can provide that I think can be really helpful."
A good sign for the future of this targeting technique is publishers seem to be taking a very realistic pricing approach. They charge a small premium in some cases, but not enough to discourage advertisers from trying something new. Revenue Science and AlmondNet have established revenue-sharing pricing models. They're incentivized to make the technology work for publishers and advertisers. Two big clues we're not reverting to 1999 or 2000.
What a relief!
Friday
Finding Gold in the Smallest Sale
By Joanna Glasner
In the quest for a simple method to make micropurchases online, more people are finding it works to pay in gold.
Well, not real gold exactly, but its virtual equivalent, a currency known as e-gold. According to Douglas Jackson, a Florida doctor who founded e-gold seven years ago as an alternative online currency backed in gold, customers increasingly use the system to make micropayments for everything from music singles to online content.
In one typical 24-hour period last week, for example, Jackson said the firm processed about 36,000 payments for a dime or less. While the company makes barely any profit from the transactions, Jackson believes that allowing miniscule payments can benefit the company by bringing in new customers, who may later have larger accounts.
"It's not a great business to be in," Jackson said. "We mostly do it because we think it's a good way for someone to get some familiarity with the system."
Although it's unclear to what degree micropayments have helped in building up accounts, Jackson believes the eternal appeal of gold as a medium for storing wealth has helped e-gold stay afloat while other alternative online currencies have crashed and burned.
Currently, Jackson estimates, the company has more than $15 million worth of its currency (or 1.65 metric tons of gold) in circulation, with the largest number of customers coming from the United States, China and Indonesia. The way it works, customers put money into their e-gold account, and the company backs it up with the equivalent amount of gold, or another precious metal they choose, at current market prices.
While he's not surprised at customers' preference for holding money backed in gold, given that it can provide some protection from currency-market risks, Jackson says he hadn't counted on it taking off as a micropayment method.
He had good reason for doubt. Anyone with a cursory historical knowledge of the decline and fall of the great Internet bubble know that alternative currencies and micropayment schemes were supposed to collapse with the rest of the dot-bomb economy.
In fact, most of them did. Back in the late 1990s, when entrepreneurs with shortsighted business plans routinely received millions in venture capital, so-called Internet currencies abounded. But, faced with competition from credit card firms and a public reluctant to shell out real money for Internet money, they never took off.
Not surprisingly, the best-known brands (generally those who burned through the most money on advertising), including Flooz, Beenz and Cybergold, are no longer around. As for firms that dabbled in providing micropayments in established currencies, none fell into widespread use.
Now, however, with the early guard long vanquished, a handful of upstart firms are entering the micropayments fray. Two newcomers, BitPass and Peppercoin, similar to the popular PayPal service, build on the existing financial infrastructure of bank accounts and credit cards, as opposed to offering an alternative currency.
Since few websites can support themselves on advertising dollars alone, they say, the time is ripe for developing a micropayment business.
"The need is great on the part of sellers to be able to charge small amounts for their music, or shareware software, or just about anything you want to click on," said Kurt Huang, co-founder of BitPass, a startup based in Palo Alto, California, that is beta-testing a payment system for purchases as low as a penny.
The way BitPass works, customers set up an account with a minimum of $3, using their credit cards, and use the money to buy things from merchants that use the service. Merchants pay a transaction fee of 15 percent for items under $5 and 5 percent plus 50 cents for more expensive things.
Currently, only a few songs, photographs and other bits of content are up for sale. Since the launch of the beta test, though, Huang says he has received inquiries from several hundred merchants interested in using BitPass.
Perry Solomon, chief executive of Peppercoin, another payment processing startup, also believes that Internet users will be more receptive to websites that seek small payments rather than giving away their content for free.
"Consumers increasingly are aware of the fact that content that has value has to be paid for," he said.
To help them pay, Peppercoin, like BitPass, provides a system for processing transactions as low as a few cents. With its platform, developed by a duo of Massachusetts Institute of Technology professors, merchants pay a fee of about 7 percent per transaction.
With e-gold, the setup is a bit different. The company charges a 1 percent annual fee to maintain the account. When account-holders make purchases, they pay a fee of 1 percent or 50 cents, whichever is less, processed through e-gold's sister company, OmniPay.
Over the next few years, Solomon believes the market for micropayments will grow big enough to support several players. He expects the largest catalyst for growth will be enthusiastic adoption by merchants, musicians and publishers looking for ways to make a living from small contributions.
"It's really in at the lower price points, the sub-five dollar levels, that merchants are really feeling the pain economically," he said.
Andrew Whinston, director of the Center for Research in Electronic Commerce at the University of Texas at Austin, says that micropayment systems face the same "chicken and egg" problem they encountered years ago.
In order for people to use new payment systems, merchants must accept them. And in order for merchants to accept them, people must use them.
In the quest for a simple method to make micropurchases online, more people are finding it works to pay in gold.
Well, not real gold exactly, but its virtual equivalent, a currency known as e-gold. According to Douglas Jackson, a Florida doctor who founded e-gold seven years ago as an alternative online currency backed in gold, customers increasingly use the system to make micropayments for everything from music singles to online content.
In one typical 24-hour period last week, for example, Jackson said the firm processed about 36,000 payments for a dime or less. While the company makes barely any profit from the transactions, Jackson believes that allowing miniscule payments can benefit the company by bringing in new customers, who may later have larger accounts.
"It's not a great business to be in," Jackson said. "We mostly do it because we think it's a good way for someone to get some familiarity with the system."
Although it's unclear to what degree micropayments have helped in building up accounts, Jackson believes the eternal appeal of gold as a medium for storing wealth has helped e-gold stay afloat while other alternative online currencies have crashed and burned.
Currently, Jackson estimates, the company has more than $15 million worth of its currency (or 1.65 metric tons of gold) in circulation, with the largest number of customers coming from the United States, China and Indonesia. The way it works, customers put money into their e-gold account, and the company backs it up with the equivalent amount of gold, or another precious metal they choose, at current market prices.
While he's not surprised at customers' preference for holding money backed in gold, given that it can provide some protection from currency-market risks, Jackson says he hadn't counted on it taking off as a micropayment method.
He had good reason for doubt. Anyone with a cursory historical knowledge of the decline and fall of the great Internet bubble know that alternative currencies and micropayment schemes were supposed to collapse with the rest of the dot-bomb economy.
In fact, most of them did. Back in the late 1990s, when entrepreneurs with shortsighted business plans routinely received millions in venture capital, so-called Internet currencies abounded. But, faced with competition from credit card firms and a public reluctant to shell out real money for Internet money, they never took off.
Not surprisingly, the best-known brands (generally those who burned through the most money on advertising), including Flooz, Beenz and Cybergold, are no longer around. As for firms that dabbled in providing micropayments in established currencies, none fell into widespread use.
Now, however, with the early guard long vanquished, a handful of upstart firms are entering the micropayments fray. Two newcomers, BitPass and Peppercoin, similar to the popular PayPal service, build on the existing financial infrastructure of bank accounts and credit cards, as opposed to offering an alternative currency.
Since few websites can support themselves on advertising dollars alone, they say, the time is ripe for developing a micropayment business.
"The need is great on the part of sellers to be able to charge small amounts for their music, or shareware software, or just about anything you want to click on," said Kurt Huang, co-founder of BitPass, a startup based in Palo Alto, California, that is beta-testing a payment system for purchases as low as a penny.
The way BitPass works, customers set up an account with a minimum of $3, using their credit cards, and use the money to buy things from merchants that use the service. Merchants pay a transaction fee of 15 percent for items under $5 and 5 percent plus 50 cents for more expensive things.
Currently, only a few songs, photographs and other bits of content are up for sale. Since the launch of the beta test, though, Huang says he has received inquiries from several hundred merchants interested in using BitPass.
Perry Solomon, chief executive of Peppercoin, another payment processing startup, also believes that Internet users will be more receptive to websites that seek small payments rather than giving away their content for free.
"Consumers increasingly are aware of the fact that content that has value has to be paid for," he said.
To help them pay, Peppercoin, like BitPass, provides a system for processing transactions as low as a few cents. With its platform, developed by a duo of Massachusetts Institute of Technology professors, merchants pay a fee of about 7 percent per transaction.
With e-gold, the setup is a bit different. The company charges a 1 percent annual fee to maintain the account. When account-holders make purchases, they pay a fee of 1 percent or 50 cents, whichever is less, processed through e-gold's sister company, OmniPay.
Over the next few years, Solomon believes the market for micropayments will grow big enough to support several players. He expects the largest catalyst for growth will be enthusiastic adoption by merchants, musicians and publishers looking for ways to make a living from small contributions.
"It's really in at the lower price points, the sub-five dollar levels, that merchants are really feeling the pain economically," he said.
Andrew Whinston, director of the Center for Research in Electronic Commerce at the University of Texas at Austin, says that micropayment systems face the same "chicken and egg" problem they encountered years ago.
In order for people to use new payment systems, merchants must accept them. And in order for merchants to accept them, people must use them.
To pay or not to pay ...
By Vin Crosbie
George Mallory. Edmund Hillary. Louis Borders. The first two are renowned for their attempts to scale Mt. Everest, the last for the book chain that bears his name and Webvan, a spectacular dot-com misadventure.
Great mountaineers and pioneering entrepreneurs share many traits. They strive to accomplish what's never been done before. They are undaunted by difficulties, adapt to adversity, and persist to success, glory, defeat, or death.
Mallory is a well-known mountaineer. He led the first attempts to climb the world's highest point. Asked why, he trenchantly replied, "Because it's there." In several daring attempts, he climbed higher than anyone before him. He was last seen in 1924, a dot in the clouds at 27,750 feet. Mallory's body, clad in tweeds, was found high on the mountain in 1999. We don't know if he reached the summit.
In 1953, Hillary and his partner, Tenzing Norgay, were first to reach the summit and survive. They succeeded through military-style planning, an army of support people, learnings about altitude and equipment, and a route almost completed by an earlier expedition. Hillary may not have been as skilled as Mallory, but he's known as the man who conquered Everest.
Borders is known for creating book "superstores." From a small shop, he designed software to manage inventories of huge stores he later opened. Borders Books sold for over $200 million.
His next venture was Webvan, through which consumers could have groceries delivered. Venture capitalists loved the concept, giving Borders some $850 million. Webvan consumed it before collapsing.
Borders' new venture is an endeavor in paid online content, KeepMedia. The online newsstand gives consumers access to back issues of periodicals for a flat $4.95 per month, far lower than other archived content aggregators, such as LexisNexis ($60 to $1,000 per month) and Factiva ($69 per year, plus $2.95 per article).
Like Hillary, Borders is following a path almost completed earlier. In 2000, media entrepreneur Steven Brill founded Contentville, which charged consumers a few dollars to download articles from books, doctoral dissertations, and over 600 magazines. Contentville spent $6 million before closing down after a year.
Brill still thinks there's demand for an online aggregation service that lets consumers search periodicals. "The Internet and electronic delivery is far and away the best way to do it," he recently told The Wall Street Journal. "Someone will get this right."
Will it be Louis Borders? I worry KeepMedia's price and execution aren't on the route to success.
KeepMedia's $4.95 monthly rate is nearly on target for a successful consumer content aggregation service. It's toward the top of what consumers say they'd pay for access to periodical content. But those consumers mean a single periodical's current content, not an aggregation of many periodicals' archives.
The specific magazines and newspapers with which KeepMedia launched are a problem. Last week, Borders told me companies have been enthusiastic about selling on KeepMedia. Perhaps trade publishers are, but many consumer magazine publishers aren't. KeepMedia launched with 28 consumer publications and 109 trades. If you're looking for previously published articles from Geonomics & Proteomics or National Hog Farmer, KeepMedia is for you. The service also offers back articles from BusinessWeek, Esquire, Fast Company, Forbes, and U.S. News & World Report, but the breadth isn't quite satisfying.
A search of the 137 periodicals for Canary Islands vacation ideas yielded 27 matches, none specifically about Canary Islands' vacations. Results included U.S. News & World Report stories about Florida, Norway, Guam, Robert Maxwell, Larry Flynt, and whale biology; a BusinessWeek article about the Euro; a commercial weaving trade journal story about local T-shirt manufacturers; Rough Guides articles about Cuban towns founded by natives of those islands. There were newspaper stories about Canarian astronomers searching for Dark Matter and that George Bernard Shaw's "Major Barbara" mentions the islands. The closest mismatch was a HOTELS magazine (trade journal) piece about management changes at a Canary Islands hotel chain.
A search for information about Minolta's Dimage digital cameras yielded BusinessWeek's and Kiplinger's articles about the industry, but none about those cameras.
Batting zero, I tried a search on hormone replacement treatments because the KeepMedia home page was promoting availability of stories on the subject. The search yielded 13 stories, but only two (from U.S. News & World Report and Forbes) were actually about hormone treatment. The other 11 were general articles about the pharmaceutical industry, menopause, direct marketing, and prostate and ovarian cancer.
Perhaps the mismatches could be eliminated with better search algorithms. But the core problem is a dearth of real consumer content.
I asked Borders about that. "We're just pleased to have 140 periodicals online at launch. We believe that we're going to get most of the other consumer magazines once they see that we've got a viable and popular service." Attracting publishers is often is a chicken-or-egg dilemma. But how many consumers will popularize a service that so far has so little consumer content?
Will consumers spend $4.95 per month only for back-issue content? In the offline world, there's not a lot of apparent demand for back magazine articles. Borders believes that's because consumers never had easy access to it. "We see this as an untapped resource. Magazine publishers have really been doing nothing with their archives. This gives them a chance to monetize their archives."
There's a need for an online archive of magazine content, but it's more a publisher need than a consumer one. Should KeepMedia offer current and back articles to consumers for $4.95 per month, the service would surmount expectations.
KeepMedia needs a more comprehensive selection of consumer magazines and more newspaper content. It offers only six Knight Ridder newspapers plus Variety, the entertainment industry trade journal. The latest Veronis Suhler Stevenson statistics show consumers last year spent $53 million (30 percent) on newspapers, $45 million (25 percent) on magazines, and $80 million (45 percent) on books. They spent 192 hours (44 percent) reading newspapers, 125 hours (28 percent) on magazines, and 123 hours (28 percent) on books. KeepMedia needs more newspaper content.
Borders agrees but says consumers won't pay for it. "It's too much of a commodity. But consumers might be willing to pay for newspaper feature articles and editorial and opinion pieces." That's KeepMedia's next goal, in addition to adding more consumer magazines.
Borders also believes the obstacles in getting consumers to pay for online content are the same as those getting them to pay for online shopping:
I don't know if there is a trend towards consumers paying for online content. But I do think it will follow the same path as e-commerce did. Consumers were initially afraid to use their credit cards to buy merchandise online. They worried about the security of their purchases and whether buying online was a good experience. Once they tried it, they liked it. Online shopping is now an everyday experience. Consumers now are reluctant to pay for online content, but once they try it, they will like it and it will become an everyday thing.
Louis Borders climbs on. Will he be a Mallory, pioneering where no one's gone before, only to have his efforts fail? Or will he be a Hillary, building on experience to surmount challenges? KeepMedia is a daring effort to watch.
George Mallory. Edmund Hillary. Louis Borders. The first two are renowned for their attempts to scale Mt. Everest, the last for the book chain that bears his name and Webvan, a spectacular dot-com misadventure.
Great mountaineers and pioneering entrepreneurs share many traits. They strive to accomplish what's never been done before. They are undaunted by difficulties, adapt to adversity, and persist to success, glory, defeat, or death.
Mallory is a well-known mountaineer. He led the first attempts to climb the world's highest point. Asked why, he trenchantly replied, "Because it's there." In several daring attempts, he climbed higher than anyone before him. He was last seen in 1924, a dot in the clouds at 27,750 feet. Mallory's body, clad in tweeds, was found high on the mountain in 1999. We don't know if he reached the summit.
In 1953, Hillary and his partner, Tenzing Norgay, were first to reach the summit and survive. They succeeded through military-style planning, an army of support people, learnings about altitude and equipment, and a route almost completed by an earlier expedition. Hillary may not have been as skilled as Mallory, but he's known as the man who conquered Everest.
Borders is known for creating book "superstores." From a small shop, he designed software to manage inventories of huge stores he later opened. Borders Books sold for over $200 million.
His next venture was Webvan, through which consumers could have groceries delivered. Venture capitalists loved the concept, giving Borders some $850 million. Webvan consumed it before collapsing.
Borders' new venture is an endeavor in paid online content, KeepMedia. The online newsstand gives consumers access to back issues of periodicals for a flat $4.95 per month, far lower than other archived content aggregators, such as LexisNexis ($60 to $1,000 per month) and Factiva ($69 per year, plus $2.95 per article).
Like Hillary, Borders is following a path almost completed earlier. In 2000, media entrepreneur Steven Brill founded Contentville, which charged consumers a few dollars to download articles from books, doctoral dissertations, and over 600 magazines. Contentville spent $6 million before closing down after a year.
Brill still thinks there's demand for an online aggregation service that lets consumers search periodicals. "The Internet and electronic delivery is far and away the best way to do it," he recently told The Wall Street Journal. "Someone will get this right."
Will it be Louis Borders? I worry KeepMedia's price and execution aren't on the route to success.
KeepMedia's $4.95 monthly rate is nearly on target for a successful consumer content aggregation service. It's toward the top of what consumers say they'd pay for access to periodical content. But those consumers mean a single periodical's current content, not an aggregation of many periodicals' archives.
The specific magazines and newspapers with which KeepMedia launched are a problem. Last week, Borders told me companies have been enthusiastic about selling on KeepMedia. Perhaps trade publishers are, but many consumer magazine publishers aren't. KeepMedia launched with 28 consumer publications and 109 trades. If you're looking for previously published articles from Geonomics & Proteomics or National Hog Farmer, KeepMedia is for you. The service also offers back articles from BusinessWeek, Esquire, Fast Company, Forbes, and U.S. News & World Report, but the breadth isn't quite satisfying.
A search of the 137 periodicals for Canary Islands vacation ideas yielded 27 matches, none specifically about Canary Islands' vacations. Results included U.S. News & World Report stories about Florida, Norway, Guam, Robert Maxwell, Larry Flynt, and whale biology; a BusinessWeek article about the Euro; a commercial weaving trade journal story about local T-shirt manufacturers; Rough Guides articles about Cuban towns founded by natives of those islands. There were newspaper stories about Canarian astronomers searching for Dark Matter and that George Bernard Shaw's "Major Barbara" mentions the islands. The closest mismatch was a HOTELS magazine (trade journal) piece about management changes at a Canary Islands hotel chain.
A search for information about Minolta's Dimage digital cameras yielded BusinessWeek's and Kiplinger's articles about the industry, but none about those cameras.
Batting zero, I tried a search on hormone replacement treatments because the KeepMedia home page was promoting availability of stories on the subject. The search yielded 13 stories, but only two (from U.S. News & World Report and Forbes) were actually about hormone treatment. The other 11 were general articles about the pharmaceutical industry, menopause, direct marketing, and prostate and ovarian cancer.
Perhaps the mismatches could be eliminated with better search algorithms. But the core problem is a dearth of real consumer content.
I asked Borders about that. "We're just pleased to have 140 periodicals online at launch. We believe that we're going to get most of the other consumer magazines once they see that we've got a viable and popular service." Attracting publishers is often is a chicken-or-egg dilemma. But how many consumers will popularize a service that so far has so little consumer content?
Will consumers spend $4.95 per month only for back-issue content? In the offline world, there's not a lot of apparent demand for back magazine articles. Borders believes that's because consumers never had easy access to it. "We see this as an untapped resource. Magazine publishers have really been doing nothing with their archives. This gives them a chance to monetize their archives."
There's a need for an online archive of magazine content, but it's more a publisher need than a consumer one. Should KeepMedia offer current and back articles to consumers for $4.95 per month, the service would surmount expectations.
KeepMedia needs a more comprehensive selection of consumer magazines and more newspaper content. It offers only six Knight Ridder newspapers plus Variety, the entertainment industry trade journal. The latest Veronis Suhler Stevenson statistics show consumers last year spent $53 million (30 percent) on newspapers, $45 million (25 percent) on magazines, and $80 million (45 percent) on books. They spent 192 hours (44 percent) reading newspapers, 125 hours (28 percent) on magazines, and 123 hours (28 percent) on books. KeepMedia needs more newspaper content.
Borders agrees but says consumers won't pay for it. "It's too much of a commodity. But consumers might be willing to pay for newspaper feature articles and editorial and opinion pieces." That's KeepMedia's next goal, in addition to adding more consumer magazines.
Borders also believes the obstacles in getting consumers to pay for online content are the same as those getting them to pay for online shopping:
I don't know if there is a trend towards consumers paying for online content. But I do think it will follow the same path as e-commerce did. Consumers were initially afraid to use their credit cards to buy merchandise online. They worried about the security of their purchases and whether buying online was a good experience. Once they tried it, they liked it. Online shopping is now an everyday experience. Consumers now are reluctant to pay for online content, but once they try it, they will like it and it will become an everyday thing.
Louis Borders climbs on. Will he be a Mallory, pioneering where no one's gone before, only to have his efforts fail? Or will he be a Hillary, building on experience to surmount challenges? KeepMedia is a daring effort to watch.
Survey Looks at Adult Male Online Habits
Dawn Anfuso
At least half of adult males multitask online, and watch TV and use the Internet simultaneously. And most don’t perceive advertising as evil.
These are some of the findings from scenarioDNA, which recently conducted a study of 749 men aged 18 to 35 and their online habits as male consumers.
The survey found that men within this segment can decipher the value of rich-media advertising. When asked about rich-media ads online, 40% of respondents feel it depends on what’s being advertised. Only 1.6% believe advertising is evil.
Slightly more than half (55.1%) of them watch TV while they’re online. And if both devices are on simultaneously, about half (48.9%) are likely to respond to what they see and/or hear on TV immediately by searching for it online or going to the URL.
Their interactive behavior is also expressed through the toys they own. More than half (55.2%) own some form of “connected” electronics. They own video on demand (VOD), interactive program guides (IPG), digital video recorders (DVR), webTV, xBox, Playstation 2 and GameCube.
Further, 57.8% of respondents multitask online. Typically, they’re regularly instant messaging, while checking their email and playing games or downloading music.
An overwhelming majority of respondents stressed that they expect convenience from online. They don’t want to drive from store to store to get what they need. That wastes their time.
What won’t waste their time? Incentives that pay. Nearly 83% said they preferred cold hard cash over discounts and certificates.
At least half of adult males multitask online, and watch TV and use the Internet simultaneously. And most don’t perceive advertising as evil.
These are some of the findings from scenarioDNA, which recently conducted a study of 749 men aged 18 to 35 and their online habits as male consumers.
The survey found that men within this segment can decipher the value of rich-media advertising. When asked about rich-media ads online, 40% of respondents feel it depends on what’s being advertised. Only 1.6% believe advertising is evil.
Slightly more than half (55.1%) of them watch TV while they’re online. And if both devices are on simultaneously, about half (48.9%) are likely to respond to what they see and/or hear on TV immediately by searching for it online or going to the URL.
Their interactive behavior is also expressed through the toys they own. More than half (55.2%) own some form of “connected” electronics. They own video on demand (VOD), interactive program guides (IPG), digital video recorders (DVR), webTV, xBox, Playstation 2 and GameCube.
Further, 57.8% of respondents multitask online. Typically, they’re regularly instant messaging, while checking their email and playing games or downloading music.
An overwhelming majority of respondents stressed that they expect convenience from online. They don’t want to drive from store to store to get what they need. That wastes their time.
What won’t waste their time? Incentives that pay. Nearly 83% said they preferred cold hard cash over discounts and certificates.
Thursday
Case Study: Audience Targeting Improves Response 2200%
“These case studies show the most complete and convincing metrics ever that audience targeting can not only lift response to ads but also customer action in response to ads and the advertiser’s bottom line,� said Tacoda’s spokesman George Simpson yesterday with the release of an announcement that DallasNews.com achieved dramatic improvements in consumer response both online and offline through targeted advertising campaigns for a local automotive dealer and a local vacation broker.
The end result was improved lead generation for the auto dealer and higher revenue for the vacation broker.
In the automotive category, DallasNews.com, the website of The Dallas Morning News, worked with a local auto dealer to increase awareness of the dealership and its inventory among consumers who were local, ready to buy, and willing to act now.
In addition to providing contextual advertising within the automotive section of DallasNews.com, targeted banners were delivered to customers who had visited the automotive section within the past 30 days. These ads were served when visitors returned to DallasNews.com even if they were outside the automotive area.
By using TACODA Systems’ Audience Management System targeting capabilities to reach visitors whose prior actions suggested a keen interest in the advertiser’s message, DallasNews.com created new ad inventory outside of the automotive classified section. The response rate among the target audience was a stunning 7.7% as compared to the national average of .33%, representing an improvement of 2200%.
In addition to increasing the advertiser’s reach and the campaign’s effectiveness, audience-targeted ads doubled the number of credit applications the dealership received, and increased the number of online searches by 17%. Furthermore, the dealership reported that the DallasNews.com campaign generated 44% of the total calls into the dealership at a time when eight promotions were running in other media.
“While contextual placement has always worked well for us, audience targeting gives us the ability to reach local, ready to buy, car shoppers who are browsing in non-automotive sections of DallasNews.com,� said Eric Christensen, vice president and general manager of Belo Interactive. “The results prove that if you deliver truly relevant ad messages, online consumers will respond. Our ability to target an advertisers’ message directly to a specified consumer audience dramatically increases the effectiveness of every advertising dollar.�
In the travel category, DallasNews.com increased the efficiency and effectiveness of a Dallas-Fort Worth area vacation broker’s online campaign aimed at visitors to DallasNews.com most likely to research, shop and purchase vacation travel.
As with the auto dealer, DallasNews.com supplemented contextually-relevant content advertising by delivering targeted ads outside of the travel section to visitors whose prior actions suggested an interest in the advertiser’s message. The response rate of 8.15% was 2,400% higher than national average. And, those that responded to the online campaign generally purchased a package within 10 days.
In addition to increasing the advertiser’s reach and the campaign’s effectiveness, audience-targeted ads increased vacation package bookings by 50%, and revenue for the vacation broker by 38%. Furthermore, by use of sophisticated tracking mechanisms, the vacation broker reported that the DallasNews.com campaign generated 40% of the total revenue in Dallas for the month of June.
Belo Interactive recently installed TACODA Systems’ Audience Management System, giving its 34 websites such as KING5.com in Seattle, WA; projo.com the website of The Providence (RI) Journal, and KMOV.com in St. Louis, MO the ability to track and measure online audience demographic and geographic information, behavioral patterns and visitation trends. By integrating Belo Interactive’s customer registration database with TACODA Systems’ AMS, Belo Interactive sites can quantify audience value to national and local advertisers and create custom, targeted advertising campaigns that deliver a specific message to a defined audience segment.
The end result was improved lead generation for the auto dealer and higher revenue for the vacation broker.
In the automotive category, DallasNews.com, the website of The Dallas Morning News, worked with a local auto dealer to increase awareness of the dealership and its inventory among consumers who were local, ready to buy, and willing to act now.
In addition to providing contextual advertising within the automotive section of DallasNews.com, targeted banners were delivered to customers who had visited the automotive section within the past 30 days. These ads were served when visitors returned to DallasNews.com even if they were outside the automotive area.
By using TACODA Systems’ Audience Management System targeting capabilities to reach visitors whose prior actions suggested a keen interest in the advertiser’s message, DallasNews.com created new ad inventory outside of the automotive classified section. The response rate among the target audience was a stunning 7.7% as compared to the national average of .33%, representing an improvement of 2200%.
In addition to increasing the advertiser’s reach and the campaign’s effectiveness, audience-targeted ads doubled the number of credit applications the dealership received, and increased the number of online searches by 17%. Furthermore, the dealership reported that the DallasNews.com campaign generated 44% of the total calls into the dealership at a time when eight promotions were running in other media.
“While contextual placement has always worked well for us, audience targeting gives us the ability to reach local, ready to buy, car shoppers who are browsing in non-automotive sections of DallasNews.com,� said Eric Christensen, vice president and general manager of Belo Interactive. “The results prove that if you deliver truly relevant ad messages, online consumers will respond. Our ability to target an advertisers’ message directly to a specified consumer audience dramatically increases the effectiveness of every advertising dollar.�
In the travel category, DallasNews.com increased the efficiency and effectiveness of a Dallas-Fort Worth area vacation broker’s online campaign aimed at visitors to DallasNews.com most likely to research, shop and purchase vacation travel.
As with the auto dealer, DallasNews.com supplemented contextually-relevant content advertising by delivering targeted ads outside of the travel section to visitors whose prior actions suggested an interest in the advertiser’s message. The response rate of 8.15% was 2,400% higher than national average. And, those that responded to the online campaign generally purchased a package within 10 days.
In addition to increasing the advertiser’s reach and the campaign’s effectiveness, audience-targeted ads increased vacation package bookings by 50%, and revenue for the vacation broker by 38%. Furthermore, by use of sophisticated tracking mechanisms, the vacation broker reported that the DallasNews.com campaign generated 40% of the total revenue in Dallas for the month of June.
Belo Interactive recently installed TACODA Systems’ Audience Management System, giving its 34 websites such as KING5.com in Seattle, WA; projo.com the website of The Providence (RI) Journal, and KMOV.com in St. Louis, MO the ability to track and measure online audience demographic and geographic information, behavioral patterns and visitation trends. By integrating Belo Interactive’s customer registration database with TACODA Systems’ AMS, Belo Interactive sites can quantify audience value to national and local advertisers and create custom, targeted advertising campaigns that deliver a specific message to a defined audience segment.
Desktop Weatherman Promotes Halifax Insurance
U.K.-based Halifax Insurance is promoting itself with a downloadable desktop character called Howard the Weatherman. Howard is a cartoon version of the corporate personality and will rest in the menu bar and then stroll across the screen to deliver weather updates.
While not a new technology, the campaign signifies an interesting attempt at gaining permanent commercial residence on the desktop, increasingly the place more people spend the most of their time.
While not a new technology, the campaign signifies an interesting attempt at gaining permanent commercial residence on the desktop, increasingly the place more people spend the most of their time.
Public Service Advertisements
The Advertising Council, in partnership with the U.S. Army, announced today the launch of new public service advertisements (PSAs) designed to encourage high school students to stay in school and earn their diploma. The new television, radio, out-of-home and Internet PSAs are the third phase of the Operation Graduation campaign and will be distributed to media outlets nationwide later this month in time for back-to-school season. Created pro bono by ad agency Bates USA, both the new student-targeted and the parent-targeted PSAs use humor to teach students about the importance of staying in school and parents about the importance of being involved in their children's education. The student campaign illustrates the fact that it's hard to return to school once a person decides to drop out by showing elderly people attempting to participate in high school activities such as cheerleading. The ads conclude with the tagline, "Once you drop out, it's tough to go back. Stay in school. Give yourself a chance." The adult-targeted ads, which are also available in Spanish, use a heartwarming approach to show parents that "it doesn't take much to keep your kids in school. It just takes you." Songwriter Maria Mena's music "Monday Morning" is featured in the adult-targeted PSA, "Cheat Sheet." Additionally, Michael Buffer and Len Lester ("Uncle Leo" from Seinfeld) are featured in the PSA campaign.
25 million new households to shop online over next 5 years, Forrester says
Close to 5 million U.S. households will join the online shopping community in each of the next 5 years, increasing the total number of online-shopping households by 67% to 63 million by 2008, Forrester Research reports. Over the same period, Forrester predicts that online retail and travel sales will grow at a steady year-over-year rate of 19%, rising from $95.7 billion this year to $229.9 billion in 2008. In addition to an expanding online consumer base, online sales will also benefit from an increase in product categories and efforts by e-retailers to optimize shopping experiences through site improvements like image zooming, Forrester says in its report, “U.S. eCommerce Overview: 2003 to 2008.”
"Although we`ve seen e-commerce growth begin to slow over the past several years, online retail continues to grow and mature," said Carrie Johnson, senior analyst at Forrester. "We are seeing considerable growth with products that have taken longer to gain traction with consumers.”
Product categories that will show increased activity in online sales over the next five years include food and beverage, sporting goods and home furnishings, growing faster than traditional online categories such as books and travel services, Forrester says.
The most dramatic growth over the next five years will come from the food and beverage category, where online sales will surge nearly five-fold, from $3.7 billion to $17.4 billion, Forrester says.
It notes that online sales of sporting goods, with a boost from the used goods market, will grow about 350%, from $1.7 billion to $6 billion. It adds that nearly a third of online sales of sporting goods will come from sales of used products.
Forrester says that online sales of books, which accounted for 14% of e-commerce sales in 2000, will drop to 3% of total online sales by 2008.
Forrester also notes that 84% of the top 92 e-commerce sites by sales offer zoom technology for better viewing of product images among other site design improvements. It adds that a stronger emphasis on site design and usability are leading to increased sales conversion rates.
"Although we`ve seen e-commerce growth begin to slow over the past several years, online retail continues to grow and mature," said Carrie Johnson, senior analyst at Forrester. "We are seeing considerable growth with products that have taken longer to gain traction with consumers.”
Product categories that will show increased activity in online sales over the next five years include food and beverage, sporting goods and home furnishings, growing faster than traditional online categories such as books and travel services, Forrester says.
The most dramatic growth over the next five years will come from the food and beverage category, where online sales will surge nearly five-fold, from $3.7 billion to $17.4 billion, Forrester says.
It notes that online sales of sporting goods, with a boost from the used goods market, will grow about 350%, from $1.7 billion to $6 billion. It adds that nearly a third of online sales of sporting goods will come from sales of used products.
Forrester says that online sales of books, which accounted for 14% of e-commerce sales in 2000, will drop to 3% of total online sales by 2008.
Forrester also notes that 84% of the top 92 e-commerce sites by sales offer zoom technology for better viewing of product images among other site design improvements. It adds that a stronger emphasis on site design and usability are leading to increased sales conversion rates.
Wednesday
ONLINE is the first choice among tweens
Emarketer reports that Harris Interactive and Teenage Research Unlimited surveyed 2,618 people between the ages of 13 and 24 in June for Yahoo! and Carat and found that respondents spend twice as much time per week watching TV as reading books or magazines for pleasure.
Time Spent with Various Media Among Teenagers and Young Adults in the US,
June 2003
Online (excluding email) 16.7 hours/week
Watching TV 13.6 hours/week
Listening to the radio 12.0 hours/week
Talking on the phone 7.7 hours/week
Reading books and mags (not scholastic) 6.0 hours/week
Source: HarrisInteractive and Teenage Research Unlimited, July 2003
The survey determined that the main reason cited among respondents for spending so much time online was the quality of "control" the Internet affords users. Users can personalize and manage their experience online more so than with any other form of media.
As for the types of Web sites teenagers are spending time with, comScore Media Metrix determined at the end of 2002 that teens between the ages of 12 and 17 spend an average of 26.6 minutes each day with instant messaging (IM) applications, 24.4 minutes per day with game sites and a whopping 41.5 minutes per day on sites with some sort of corporate presence.
eMarketer projects that by the end of this year, roughly 17% of US Internet users will be between the ages of nine and 17 and about 29% will be between the ages of 18 and 34.
Time Spent with Various Media Among Teenagers and Young Adults in the US,
June 2003
Online (excluding email) 16.7 hours/week
Watching TV 13.6 hours/week
Listening to the radio 12.0 hours/week
Talking on the phone 7.7 hours/week
Reading books and mags (not scholastic) 6.0 hours/week
Source: HarrisInteractive and Teenage Research Unlimited, July 2003
The survey determined that the main reason cited among respondents for spending so much time online was the quality of "control" the Internet affords users. Users can personalize and manage their experience online more so than with any other form of media.
As for the types of Web sites teenagers are spending time with, comScore Media Metrix determined at the end of 2002 that teens between the ages of 12 and 17 spend an average of 26.6 minutes each day with instant messaging (IM) applications, 24.4 minutes per day with game sites and a whopping 41.5 minutes per day on sites with some sort of corporate presence.
eMarketer projects that by the end of this year, roughly 17% of US Internet users will be between the ages of nine and 17 and about 29% will be between the ages of 18 and 34.
Tuesday
The Minerva Architectural Process
Here at Future Now, we're in a pretty synthetic frame of mind. No, I don't mean polyesters, I mean synthesis … bringing together ideas from lots of different sources that help reveal a different, coherent way of looking at things – something that is more than the sum of its parts. A gestalt.
You've probably noticed that I've casually been tossing around two particular words lately. They aren't words you've really run across before (unless you've been reading my stuff or my buddy Bryan's ROI articles for ClickZ). But they are words we believe will change the way folks approach the design, development, implementation and optimization of Web sites.
The two words? Persuasive Architecture. It's the framework for synthesizing all the things you and I have been discussing over the years. And associated with this framework is our process for persuasive design: the Minerva Architectural Process.
Or MAP for short.
You guys know online success isn't about sitting there twiddling your thumbs hoping the traffic that makes it to your site takes action. You have to be an active agent in the exchange – you have to persuade your visitors by interweaving the selling process with the buying process, consistently applying AIDAS as you answer the WIIFM question, all the while incorporating tenets of usability and information architecture. These are the critical elements behind any form of sales or conversion.
MAP is the process of making sure the design of your Web site has a solid foundation, so it persuades and converts your visitors more effectively.
The Phases of MAP
Uncovery.
Skillful uncovery is the first necessary step toward designing and developing effective persuasive architecture. Neglecting this phase would be the architectural equivalent of constructing a building but omitting the footers! Uncovery is responsible for mapping objectives, developing strategy, understanding the customer's buying process, understanding and refining the sales process, researching keywords and key phrases and defining the key business metrics you will use. If you don't get the uncovery part right, you won't be able to define or measure success.
Wireframing.
Wireframing defines the WHAT of the creative process. It's a structural representation of every click through possibility and path your visitors might take. No pictures, no graphic design, just bare bones text and hyperlinks. You can click the links and see where you go; you can get a feel for the process of the site and help generate useful feedback at a time when changes and multiple iterations are a snap. When you wireframe, you evaluate the entire Web site and all its interactions before you enter the more costly phase of programming. Saves you time, saves you money!
Wireframed Web pages ideally contain the answers to the three questions essential to the persuasive process:
What actions satisfy the objective?
Who needs to be persuaded to take action?
How do you persuade them most effectively to take action?
Look familiar?
Storyboarding.
Storyboarding focus on HOW you go about accomplishing the WHAT. It's the way you begin to flesh out your wireframe. When you storyboard, you develop the persuasive copy that is going to grab your visitors' attention and motivate them through your site. You begin to consider the graphic mockup, paying careful attention to scanning and skimming, the eight second Grok Rule, the priority of content and KISS. Your first storyboards should appear in grayscale, so you can evaluate the composition and process without the emotional influence of color. You then proceed to a color mockup and finally, an HTML mockup in which you also consider download speeds, browser compatibilities, style sheets and tabular formats that help search engine spiders crawl your site.
Prototyping.
As you iteratively storyboard your way along, you eventually get to the point where you have a finished prototype of your Web site that will be identical to the actual final product. It will meet the needs of the various personae who visit your site. It will offer them paths through the various scenarios that reflect their needs in the buying and selling process. It will communicate relevance at every turn.
When both the client and the developer agree prototyping is complete, you freeze the prototype. No other changes can be made – at least not in this version.
Development.
Now, and only now, do you begin coding. Every detail is specified in the prototype. There's no need for guesswork. Just keep in mind: programming costs considerably more than planning – every hour you spend planning saves you roughly three hours in coding. The developers don't need to make choices for you – ones you'll probably have to fix later on – they simply get to do what they do best: code.
Optimization.
The site works. Just as you intended it to. You unleash it on the cyber-public, and then the fun begins. If you've followed the process methodically and thoroughly, if you've completed each phase in order without rushing the process or meandering through it, then you have a starting point for testing and measuring that will allow you to adjust your tactics to maximize your effectiveness. Establish and consistently follow a disciplined strategy for monitoring your Web analytics. It's really the only way to come full circle in the process, to determine how closely you meet your objectives and how you can improve your results on every page that doesn't meet its responsibility.
And that's MAP in a nutshell.
So, why Minerva? The Romans called her Minerva; the Greeks called her Athena. Born from Jupiter's (Zeus's) head and commonly known as the goddess of war, Minerva was also the goddess of arts, industry and handicraft, as well as the deity who presided over wisdom, study and intelligence. In Homer's Odyssey - where she appears as Athena, her Greek name - she disguises herself as a man called Mentor and advises Odysseus' son, Telemachus. Mentor has entered our language as the word for a wise and sympathetic guide.
An appropriate figurehead, wouldn't you say? Stick around … it's bound to be one heckuva ride!
You've probably noticed that I've casually been tossing around two particular words lately. They aren't words you've really run across before (unless you've been reading my stuff or my buddy Bryan's ROI articles for ClickZ). But they are words we believe will change the way folks approach the design, development, implementation and optimization of Web sites.
The two words? Persuasive Architecture. It's the framework for synthesizing all the things you and I have been discussing over the years. And associated with this framework is our process for persuasive design: the Minerva Architectural Process.
Or MAP for short.
You guys know online success isn't about sitting there twiddling your thumbs hoping the traffic that makes it to your site takes action. You have to be an active agent in the exchange – you have to persuade your visitors by interweaving the selling process with the buying process, consistently applying AIDAS as you answer the WIIFM question, all the while incorporating tenets of usability and information architecture. These are the critical elements behind any form of sales or conversion.
MAP is the process of making sure the design of your Web site has a solid foundation, so it persuades and converts your visitors more effectively.
The Phases of MAP
Uncovery.
Skillful uncovery is the first necessary step toward designing and developing effective persuasive architecture. Neglecting this phase would be the architectural equivalent of constructing a building but omitting the footers! Uncovery is responsible for mapping objectives, developing strategy, understanding the customer's buying process, understanding and refining the sales process, researching keywords and key phrases and defining the key business metrics you will use. If you don't get the uncovery part right, you won't be able to define or measure success.
Wireframing.
Wireframing defines the WHAT of the creative process. It's a structural representation of every click through possibility and path your visitors might take. No pictures, no graphic design, just bare bones text and hyperlinks. You can click the links and see where you go; you can get a feel for the process of the site and help generate useful feedback at a time when changes and multiple iterations are a snap. When you wireframe, you evaluate the entire Web site and all its interactions before you enter the more costly phase of programming. Saves you time, saves you money!
Wireframed Web pages ideally contain the answers to the three questions essential to the persuasive process:
What actions satisfy the objective?
Who needs to be persuaded to take action?
How do you persuade them most effectively to take action?
Look familiar?
Storyboarding.
Storyboarding focus on HOW you go about accomplishing the WHAT. It's the way you begin to flesh out your wireframe. When you storyboard, you develop the persuasive copy that is going to grab your visitors' attention and motivate them through your site. You begin to consider the graphic mockup, paying careful attention to scanning and skimming, the eight second Grok Rule, the priority of content and KISS. Your first storyboards should appear in grayscale, so you can evaluate the composition and process without the emotional influence of color. You then proceed to a color mockup and finally, an HTML mockup in which you also consider download speeds, browser compatibilities, style sheets and tabular formats that help search engine spiders crawl your site.
Prototyping.
As you iteratively storyboard your way along, you eventually get to the point where you have a finished prototype of your Web site that will be identical to the actual final product. It will meet the needs of the various personae who visit your site. It will offer them paths through the various scenarios that reflect their needs in the buying and selling process. It will communicate relevance at every turn.
When both the client and the developer agree prototyping is complete, you freeze the prototype. No other changes can be made – at least not in this version.
Development.
Now, and only now, do you begin coding. Every detail is specified in the prototype. There's no need for guesswork. Just keep in mind: programming costs considerably more than planning – every hour you spend planning saves you roughly three hours in coding. The developers don't need to make choices for you – ones you'll probably have to fix later on – they simply get to do what they do best: code.
Optimization.
The site works. Just as you intended it to. You unleash it on the cyber-public, and then the fun begins. If you've followed the process methodically and thoroughly, if you've completed each phase in order without rushing the process or meandering through it, then you have a starting point for testing and measuring that will allow you to adjust your tactics to maximize your effectiveness. Establish and consistently follow a disciplined strategy for monitoring your Web analytics. It's really the only way to come full circle in the process, to determine how closely you meet your objectives and how you can improve your results on every page that doesn't meet its responsibility.
And that's MAP in a nutshell.
So, why Minerva? The Romans called her Minerva; the Greeks called her Athena. Born from Jupiter's (Zeus's) head and commonly known as the goddess of war, Minerva was also the goddess of arts, industry and handicraft, as well as the deity who presided over wisdom, study and intelligence. In Homer's Odyssey - where she appears as Athena, her Greek name - she disguises herself as a man called Mentor and advises Odysseus' son, Telemachus. Mentor has entered our language as the word for a wise and sympathetic guide.
An appropriate figurehead, wouldn't you say? Stick around … it's bound to be one heckuva ride!
