We Love The Web - Blogorhea

'Should we promote our site using Google AdWords, or invest in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?' Which is better? I get asked this a lot.

SEO is a basic 'Thing you should do'. If you don't, you are throwing money away.

Not doing SEO on your site is like spending £10,000 on a brochure but keeping it in a box at the back of a cupboard. Silly, right? SEO improves the chances of your customers finding you. The basics are not even technical, but they do take time (this will be the subject of a 'how-to' very soon).

If you haven't done the SEO basics then you shouldn't even be considering AdWords.

Let's assume you've done the basics. Should you invest more in SEO, or spend money on AdWords?

That depends.

AdWords are good when:

• You've done all the basic SEO stuff
• You have a specific product, service or event to promote
• You need to get the word out 'Right Now!'
• You are prepared to spend time testing and measuring what leads to sales and what doesn't. If you don't, then you'll get a lot of click-throughs, but no sales.

Bad things about AdWords:

• As soon as you stop spending, the traffic stops.

SEO is good when:

• You have a reasonably stable target audience or range of products.
• You don't have a huge budget.
• You want to do some work now and reap the benefits for the next year or more.

Bad things about SEO:

• It's hard to test and measure results quickly.

We have used AdWords in the past with good results to refine keyword choices for optimisation. We use AdWords to work out what SEO we should do!

So: we have a very low budget Adwords campaign on a number of different keywords. At the end of the month, we look at which Adwords generated the most sign-ups/sales/enquiries. We then know how to optimise the site. This is a good way to make sure your SEO budget is used effectively.

Whatever you do, make sure you measure the outcomes to see what you get back from the money you spend.

Seriously, how hard can it be? A few wipes, fades, a line of text and a logo. Bish, bosh, bash: job done.

Aye, maybe: but you do underestimate the ability of people to complicate the simplest thing.

If you need to make a banner advert for a client then here's what you need to know.

What's an Ad management platform

Any website that publishes a lot of adverts will have an Ad management platform. These control how many times a banner is shown, when it's shown, tracks clickthroughs, handles where in the site the Ad is served and so on. We have to make a banner that can talk and listen to the Ad manager. This affects the deliverables in a number of ways and we'll ask a number of questions before we take on a job.

What's the clickTag?

When you click a flash advert, you get taken to the target page on your website. Under the hood, the flash movie shouts out 'I've been clicked', then the ad management platform steps in, looks up where it needs to take you, records the click and only then passes you on.

The clickTag is the 'hook' that the ad management platform uses to track whether or not the banner has been clicked and we need to include that in our banner movie. They differ slightly between ad platforms and the publisher will normally be able to give you/us that code fragment.

What's the maximum file size?

Flash banners are generally tiny, tiny files: 30-40Kb. This is because a magazine can easily serve a million pages a day, each with several ads on it. Serving big files turns into an expensive headache for publishers really quickly. They have strict rules, therefore, on how big your file can be.

Well, how do I get whizziness and video into my flash with that file size limit?

Since 30Kb is barely the size of a jpeg, it can be very challenging to do anything other than a few wipes and fades leading to a text-slogan. A lot of the time and effort we spend is often making the flash movie into a small enough file.

As a basic guide: We can do quite a lot with vector artwork in 30Kb.

The big things to avoid are:

• Too many fonts(more than 2)
• Too many photos (more than 2)

We've all seen adverts that contain video and other rich media though, so how are they done?

The basic file you send to the publishers is still only 30Kb, but it usually just contains code and a placeholder image. Once loaded, the banner then goes and fetches video, images etc. hosted on a web server elsewhere, pulling that into the banner for display.

In the early days of video banners that caused a real problem: all these big files were being loaded in at the same time and people weren't able to see the page they were trying to access as it took theee days to load. So, nowadays we have to do 'polite loading'. Polite loading waits until the rest of the page has finished loading, then asks for all its heavyweight files one after the other.

The only way that the banner knows that the rest of the page has finished loading is if the ad management platform tells it so. We have to include code (that the publisher will supply) in the banner that allows the banner and the ad management platform to 'talk'. Whether or not we can do polite loading should be checked with the publishers before you start on the creative.

How do we do those flash banners that pop-out over half the page?
First off, ask the publisher if they allow that on their site (the key term is 'expandables').

If they do support expandables then we go to the technical bit. These are made up of 2 separate flash movies that are both hosted by an ad management platform, ready to be served in that particular format. It knows to serve both and handles the switching between them.

As an aside: because they are separate movies, you can't pass information between the small and the large size, so you can't pass over what frame they were on or whether sound was off etc.

Skyscrapers, Leaderboards and Micro Bars: what size should I make my ad?
For the actual build, the publisher will have specs.

During meetings, you'll often find people in the industry referring loosely to the various formats by name and you may not know which is which. Here's a lookup list matching name to sizes helpful: http://www.iab.net/iab_products_and_industry_services/1421/1443/1452

What about iPhones: they don't use flash?

Not just iPhones, but anyone who doesn't have flash installed won't be able to see your ad. To get around this, it's normal to supply either a Jpeg file or animated Gif file as a 'flash alternative'. This also needs to come in under that 30kb file size liimit.

If it's a Jpeg then it can't be animated. Using a gif file, we can usually get two, sometimes three, page states out of it as long as they are simple. The main decider is the number of different colours we need to use as Gifs compress by posterising the image to reduce the number of colours. Photo's and gradients need a lot of colours to look nice, so think flat screens of colour and text when designing the alternative.

Allow for a small amount of artworking time to create a flash alternative.

How do you want the artwork then?

• A storyboard is essential - outlining the screenstates and transitions (we can work with you on creative effects and transitions).
• Crucial: let us see them before they go to the client due to the restrictions on file size etc.
• Illustrator files please: this is vector artwork.
• RGB, 72dpi, outlined fonts or fonts (if appropriately licensed).
• Flash alternative artwork
• Comic Sans font files will spontaneously combust on collision with our firewall.

What are Doubleclick and Eyeblaster?

These are Ad networks. They have management platforms used to serve a lot of Ads on more than one site. Creating accounts for these is usually aimed at bigger ad campaigns that sort of fall out of the scope of this how-to: that's more of a media buyer's job. We've worked on campaigns like this before. If you are planning an online media campaign big enough to need these systems then you'll also need digital media buyers.

And finally: those banners that show me what I was looking at on a shopping site last week: how do they work?

Debenhams (or whoever) have a media account with a big ad network who we will, for arguments sake, call 'Doubleblaster' or maybe 'Eyeclick'. As you browse the Debenhams site, it puts a cookie from on your machine with a unique number. Every time you look at a product, it calls up the Doubleblaster server and pushes 'person 395241564 looked at a Smeg fridge on the Debenhams site'. Thereafter, everytime you go to a site that serves Ads from Doubleblaster, they look up your cookie and what products you looked at, then serve info. about those products back to you as Ads.

The idea is that people often browse for something a few days before the buying decision and repeatedly jogging their memory leads to extra sales. It works, but it can be a bit disconcerting. 

As always, if you want more help or have specific questions, then phone 01422 847958 and ask for either Frank or Jules: we're happy to help.

We can see that he doesn't get on with designers: he's must have annoyed all the designers he knows so much that they refuse to work on his brochure. Boy, is that an ugly piece of print.

Anyway, this inestimable pamphlet outlines how web designers don't care about about the benefits of being sociable online, keeping in contact with customers and writing relevant content (then keeping it fresh with regular updates). It seems we ignore SEO, analytics, testing, measurement and other techniques that allow you to see how that money you are spending online contributes to the bottom line.

Please note: we really, really want you to pay attention to these things! (And not just because some of them are chargeable services).

They make the difference between a website that adds to your profits and one that just sits there, not doing 'owt for you.

Analogy time: I go to my friends' house to see my friend. There's always something cool happening at his house. No matter how well built it is, I go there to see him, not admire his joists!

A website build can create a great place to hang out online: with metaphorical comfortable seating, pleasing architecture and light, airy atriums. Thing is, if no-one's visiting then it's just a dead space.

Dead space doesn't sell.

Help us help you make sure you have proper content, social and measurement plans as a core part of your online marketing. It makes all the difference.

It raises a smile every time I go to that café, but then I’m easily pleased. I can see the marketing meeting in my mind's eye: brainstorming around the core message that this tea helps create a small piece of the day that's just for you. 15 minutes where the outside world can go hang itself as you detox in herbal-tea-heaven.

The café in question is at the railway station here in Hebden Bridge, so people passing through are likely to be in a hurry. They must have been losing enough in sales to make it worth putting up a sticker to 'augment' the branding. It's a salutary reminder to consider where and how the messages you send might be delivered.

Seriously, however, it hightlights the importance of test-driven design processes. We know that test-driven design is great at picking up unintentional messages that you are sending and feeding those back into the creative process. There's nothing like showing a design to people not involved in the process for highlighting where your assumptions have led you astray.

In April, Warp Films will launch DRM-free film download sales from its online store at www.warpfilmstore.com. Warp will start with a small selection of films that includes the Artic Monkeys - Live at the Apollo, the film of All Tomorrow's Parties and Le Donk and Scor-Zay-Zee directed by Shane Meadows and starring Paddy Considine. The list of films will grow over time to include future releases such as Chris Morris' Four Lions and most of Warp films' back catalogue.

We Love The Web ltd. worked with Warp Films to design and build the site.

It¹s a shame that this is in any way newsworthy. DRM is the copy protection stuff that¹s been so successful in keeping the Internet free of music and film piracy*, whilst giving customers who support artists and film-makers a worse experience than you get by pirating the film. Films bought by download are usually locked to a single computer and iPod**: so you if you want to watch that film at a mate's house, you'll have to take your computer with you. Using the files on your next computer may not work either.

There was real debate throughout the site¹s development about whether to go for copy protection or not. The decider was that we were able to find copies of Le Donk and Scor-Zay-Zee on Pirate Bay, Rapidshare and myriad bit torrent sites within 30 seconds of looking: this was weeks before the DVD was released. We¹ve been lucky in working with Warp. The 'Bleep' music store www.bleep.net run by Warp Records led the way in 2006 by in selling legal MP3s without copy restrictions. They've built a good business doing so.

We respect Warp Films for having the guts to trust its customers. Piracy is a major problem, but punishing the people who have chosen to support you seems contrary at best. Copy protection doesn't prevent piracy. Most major releases are on Rapidshare or Pirate Bay before they are even available to buy, so it's evidently not working. We understand how scary it is for film-makers to release this stuff, but it's the right thing to do. Surrendering the illusion of control is hard, but deliberately crippling your product only makes paying customers cross.

* the 'Sarcasm' warning flag is raised.
** iPod or other digital media player.

If you are a DJ, having that hot new record in your bag for Friday is kinda important. The first shop to get it in stock will probably get the sale. Getting out the word about their hot new platters is worth hundreds of pounds a week to Fat City. It's useful to their customers too: DJs who want the latest and greatest. 

We built an easily managed website extension that pushes Fat City’s new stock direct from the website to Twitter through the twitter API (the allowed ‘under the hood’ connectors that allow you to talk to Twitter automagically. In the time it takes to tick a checkbox (about 2 seconds), it’s up there at www.twitter.com/fatcityshop

This is a good use of twitter: benefitting both the shop and its customers. Finding a happy confluence of wants and needs is what social media marketing is all about.

The Fat City site is actually hugely sophisticated. It’s one of the top five independent record stores in the country, serving tens of thousands of weekly visitors. There’s a weekly email-out measured in tens of thousands,  all the stock is automatically fed through to Google Shopping and www.gemm.co.uk (like eBay for music) and so on. It’s one of those sites that looks simple on the outside but spreads as far as the eye can see under the hood.

eCommerce is about a lot more than a shop-front these days...

Just got my favourite email of the year so far from a recruitment agent.

It began:

Hi <<firstname>>,

And went on to extol the virtues of their personal, tailored recruitment service.