WORD OF THE WEEK - "Digg"
I've seen this little icon on the bottom of many sites. Or even the term to "Digg" an article, blog posting, video, etc. So what does "Digg"ing it mean? Digg (according to Wikipedia) is a community-based news article popularity website. It combines social bookmarking, blogging and syndication with a form of non-hierarchical, democratic editorial control. News stories and websites are submitted by users, and then promoted to the front page through a user-based ranking system.
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The internet is like Paul Harvey
I'm assuming most of you are familiar with the syndicated radio broadcaster - Paul Harvey and his famous quote "And now for the rest of the story..." Pay attention to traditional media and just how many campaigns tell you to visit "www...." for more. During the Superbowl, while I didn't count, I bet that at least half of the commercials asked to you visit their URL for more.
Good execution:
I was watching TV last night and UPS's "Whiteboard" campaign commercial was on. It had a guy drawing on a whiteboard, illustrating just one way in which UPS can help your business. Then, "to find out more, visit www.ups.com/whiteboard". This is one of the best "completing the story" executions I've seen in a long time. This "microsite" is an in-depth web of videos, animated shorts, copy and illustrations that allow users to interact, pick their problem, snoop around and find a solution that's relevant to them. They bring the brand elements through by using the "TV Illustrator" guy at the intro and followed through with the 'illustrative' style they introduced on TV. This site is a great example of taking the brand to the next step and allowing people to engage further.
Bad execution:
Another example of one that is not as well done is for the Children's Hospital in Minneapolis. I've been seeing the TV commercials that tell a story about a family and their premature babies, then it drives you online to find out more. I couldn't remember the URL, so I just went to www.childrensmn.org and "Great!" there was a banner at the top of the page that has the graphic I saw on tv and the copy that says "Born 3 months early..." I'm hoping for more details on that story, maybe an update on their life...link to their progress blog...anything. However, when I got there, I was disappointed. I couldn't figure out how to "continue the story". So I left.
The moral of the story is - if you're going to ask people to go out of their way to get more online - deliver something worthwhile. The last thing you want to do is disappoint someone before they even buy your product or service.
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Unique Navigation System
This is a pretty cool site - Sparks - as long as you're willing to just "play" with it an are not actually coming here to complete a task or look for specific information. While this site HAS a lot of good, useful information, it requires you to go on a bit of a journey to find it. It's an entire wall with scribbles and art and furniture and wall hangings. You navigate by moving around the wall. If you scroll all the way to the bottom you can see the "sitemap" of the entire wall to get an appreciation for the whole thing. Again - fun design, executed well, but not really task-based functionality.
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Great Quote:
This quote has nothing to do with interactive or websites - but it does have to do with the presentation of information. And I just thought it was worth sharing:
"One of the things I learned about in the formative stages of my career was public speaking. I learned by watching lots of presentations, and one thing I figured out early on is that most CFO-level speakers — particularly CEOs, particularly male CEOs—really suck as speakers. They're boring; they're long; they wander around. I saw speech after speech, and I discovered that if there's anything worse than a speaker who sucks, it's a speaker who sucks and you have no idea how much longer he or she is going to suck. That's a horrible feeling.
To prevent you from getting that feeling, I've developed a Top 10 format. All of my speeches are in Top 10 format, because if you think I suck, I at least want you to be able to track my progress through the speech so that you know approximately know how much longer I'm going to suck."
— Guy Kawasaki
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