Over the past week, there’s been a lot of digital ink spilled over Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s decision to pull funding from Planned Parenthood, and its swift about face.

Taking the politics out of the situation, Komen has provided a textbook example of how to severely—and possibly irrevocably—damage your brand. Its bungling of the original announcement, its initial silence (while Planned Parenthood went on a PR/social media offensive), its feeble attempt to reframe its policy decision, and finally its sheepish reversal, had the cumulative effect of tarnishing its image as a non-partisan advocate for women’s health and angering supporters on both sides of the issue.

But rather than piling on about the mistakes made by Komen, we wanted to focus on an organization that did all the right things last week in terms of messaging, outreach, and brand positioning: The Ms. Foundation for Women. This high-visibility non-profit organization took swift and immediate action to address the situation in a way that promoted their organizational goals and advanced their cause.

After Komen’s initial announcement, the Ms. Foundation worked quickly to figure the most effective way to shape its message, reach its supporters, and inspire them to take action. In less than 72 hours, Ms. Foundation supporters had a message urging them to donate to “The Ms. Foundation Stands with Planned Parenthood.” Supporters learned that Ms. would match their donations dollar-for-dollar up to a total of $40,000.

Launching the campaign involved a great deal of planning and fast-thinking. “Rapid response involves a lot of moving parts,” said Kelly Parisi, Vice President, Marketing and Communications for the Ms. Foundation. “With the Ms Foundation stands with Planned Parenthood, there were so many elements . . .  from identifying what we were going to call this campaign, to how we were going to message our response, and getting the website up and able to accept donations correctly. Adding the element of a matching campaign proved another layer of complication, because there were a lot of pieces that needed to get lined up before we could launch it and put the press release out.”

The campaign proved to be highly effective. Within 30 minutes of sending the initial email, the Ms. Foundation had received 27 donations. Yes, you read that correctly—nearly one donation per minute. And donations continue to roll in.

“It was a really galvanizing issue for people,” said Parisi, “And also I think the immediacy of it was helpful. People who are very passionate about this issue were excited about the ability to take their dollars even further.”

Given that the Komen Foundation reversed its decision the following day, it’s safe to say that immediacy was the most essential key to the Ms. Foundation’s success. With an effective message, a clear mission, and a rapid, disciplined response, the Ms. Foundation was able to transform its supporters’ outrage into action—and dollars—for Planned Parenthood.

If your company has an opportunity to launch a successful, time-sensitive campaign, follow the Ms. Foundation's example:

1. Develop a simple, coherent message and call to action
2. Have the technology in place to launch a rapid response
3. Reach out to your audience as quickly and thoroughly as possible

If you need help with your online marketing strategies or technology platform, contact CDG. We'll help you get everything in place so you're ready to react.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled blog post with an urgent message – you MUST do usability testing on your website.

Although it might sound daunting—and expensive—usability testing is nothing more than a fancy term for getting an objective opinion. As the wonderful Steve Krug (who has a PhD in Awesome) has pointed out, usability testing doesn’t have to be expensive or time-consuming. And it always gives you insight into how you can improve your site.

Last week at CDG, we conducted formal usability testing sessions with a client who’s redesigning a site for a very specific audience. In testing just seven users over the course of two days, we found—happily—that users had a quite positive reaction to the site. Much more importantly, however, we identified several, crucial, forehead-slap inducing changes that we need to make. These changes aren’t huge, and they won’t be difficult to fix, but without getting objective opinions from the target audience, we wouldn’t have known that there was a problem to fix (at least, not until the redesigned site was launched—and that’s too late).

At CDG, we regularly do formal testing sessions on behalf of clients, but we also do informal testing as well—and it’s always revealing and useful

So, how can you get the benefits of usability testing? Easy.

• Round up five people who aren’t familiar with your site. Ideally, they’ll be somewhat representative of your target audience.
• Ask them to look at your site and give some general impressions
• See if they can perform two or three key tasks (buying a product, finding a contact form, etc.)
• Take some notes

That’s it.

I guarantee that if you get five people to give you an objective opinion about your site, you’ll come away with ways to improve it. Maybe your site just needs few tweaks, or maybe it needs some bigger fixes. Either way, knowledge is power.

If you want to learn more about usability testing, check out Steve Krug’s Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems.

Need more help? Contact CDG. We’re happy to help.

If I had a dollar for every time a client fretted over “the fold”—well, I wouldn’t be a millionaire, but I could certainly afford an iPhone 4S. The idea of a page fold (and the fear of it) is a widely accepted bit of conventional wisdom, but that’s changing. We want to do our part to explore the myth of the fold and explain: what it is, whether it still exists, and how much agita it should cause you and your marketing team.

What is the fold?

The fold is a term adopted from newspaper publishing, where the most important items were featured in at the top of the page, visible above the paper’s fold. In the interactive industry, the fold refers to the point at which the user needs to scroll to see content. Anything visible above that point is considered to be “above the fold”.

Where is the fold?

Some people argue pretty passionately that there is no fold. I’m going to simply concede that—unless all of your content can be consumed on any device (including mobile) without scrolling, that the fold does exist. But pinning down its precise location is harder than geo tagging the Loch Ness Monster. Sure, your web stats can help you approximate where the fold falls for a portion of your users. However, given the varieties of screen resolution, monitor size, browser usage, and devices available (computers vs. mobile devices) there is literally no way to know where the fold resides for all—or even most—of your viewers.

How important is the fold?

This is the big question. When clients express concern about the fold, what they’re really worrying about is the kernel at the center of the fold mythology, namely:

The Myth that Users Will Not Scroll

<sinister music>dum dum DUMMMM. . . </sinister music>

Now here’s a myth worth BUSTING.

Like most myths, this one has some basis in fact. Back in the day when dinosaurs roamed and we all had dial-up connections, scrolling wasn’t the easy breezy task it is today. In fact, AOL did not allow page-level vertical scrolling. Beyond that, we were all learning how to consume information on the web. So it’s true that users didn’t scroll – in 1994.

Times have changed. As early as 1997, usability guru Jakob Nielsen retracted his recommendation against scrolling pages. And many studies have proven that users do scroll, and even use the scrollbar itself to assess the page length. Yet in 2011 people still are afraid that any content below the fold is effectively invisible.

To be fair, above-the-fold content does get the most attention, and the most clicks. The problem is, when you try to cram everything above the fold, you short-circuit you’re the users’ attention with information overload. When every department in an organization is clamoring for their stake at the top of the homepage, you need to remind them:

When everything is important, nothing is important.

Should we just forget about the fold?

Yes and no. The fold does still exist, but its existence doesn’t lead to hard-and-fast rules. Instead of shoving everything into the top of the page, good designers will create an environment that keeps key items featured at the top, yet implies that there’s valuable content below. Jakob Nielsen calls this an “information scent”— the page layout, design and content should allow the user to pick up the expectation of more content and follow it down the page.

Instead of completely disregarding the fold, I propose that we call a fold truce. Stop fighting to place every little bit of content in the very limited space above the fold and trust the intelligence of your users. If you give them a reason to scroll and reward them with quality content that matches their expectation, you’re going to iron out that fold pretty darn fast.

Need help getting the wrinkles out of your site? Contact CDG.

It’s a sad day at CDG, as we remember the passing of the great Steve Jobs—someone who truly lived up to the overused descriptors of visionary, genius, game-changer, and legend. None of us ever met Mr. Jobs in person (although some CDG-ers had  a sighting of him at Apple headquarters while working on one of the first iAds), but we feel a palpable sense of loss for someone who moved our industry—and our culture—so far, so fast.

Thank you, Steve, for shepherding us into the future. We will miss you.

When Hurricane Irene hit over the weekend, one small vacation rental business in the Outer Banks of North Carolina used social media to keep its customers informed—and to keep its community connected to the outside world.  

I’ve been following Outer Beaches Realty (OBR) on Facebook for almost two years, ever since I rented a cottage from them in 2009. The company uploads frequent, sometimes daily, videos of the sights & sounds of the Outer Banks, and also uses Facebook and Twitter to publicize contests and giveaways.

With Hurricane Irene, they’re really stepped up their social media presence. OBR began posting updates about Irene as early as last Wednesday, to let customers know whether their summer vacation would be a go. Once it became apparent that Irene had her eye set on the Outer Banks, the company kicked into high gear, providing continual updates, videos, and even a live streaming video chat--during the hurricane and after.

Intrepid staff member Kurt is serving as the face of the company, providing photos, videos, and updates on how the communities in the Outer Banks are faring. Meanwhile, OBR President Alex Risser is providing twice daily updates on the company’s website, with details on how repairs are coming along, and how customers can file travel insurance claims. And they’re doing this while simultaneously dealing with massive power outages and heavy damage to the properties they manage.

To gauge how much goodwill OBR is generating from its above-and-beyond social media efforts, you only need to look at the comments on Facebook (And remember, many of these comments are coming from people who’ve just had to cancel their summer vacations):

Continue reading "Coming through for Customers in a Hurricane" »

There was a whole lot of shaking going on yesterday at CDG's offices, thanks to the once-in-a-century 5.8 earthquake. No injuries or significant damage to report, here or elsewhere. So, from the creative team that brought you Snowpocalypse '10 apparel (also the creative team that ran panicked down eight flights of stairs in seconds flat), comes a snazzy T-shirt to commemorate DC Earthquake 2011. Hopefully, we will not have to add to the line of natural disaster swag for a long while. Get your Earthquake T-shirt today!