Return of the King

The expression “Content is King” is a great expression; one that is certainly true.

I’m seeing an increase in interest in usability, particularly on websites. This ties in neatly with the fact that I get very frustrated watching brilliant online campaigns driving massive volumes of traffic to sites, only for the users to drop off when they get there. Usually, it’s the guys behind the campaign who get it in the neck (what’s new?!): no one (certainly not the site owners) think to question the design or usability of the where the users are landing.

But times are changin’, and suddenly, there seems to be an increased interest in what happens AFTER a user leaves an SEM campaign. This also encompasses various aspects of analytics, where the user returns to the site at a later date, but it’s the main concepts of usability that get me: Good design can not be underestimated as to how much infuence it can have.

Apocalyptical Confusion

Ok, there seems to have been some confusion over my opinion that the digital industry will flourish as the economy takes a down-turn.

My original comments related to online marketing.

Alongside my otimistic agency views, I’m also of the opinion that other internet-functioning businesses could be hit pretty hard. Examples:

E-Bay issued a stark warning that profits could be down this christmas – this last quarter saw revenue rise by 12% ($2.12bn) which was lower than analyst predictions. A quick recalculation later and the number-monkeys expect total 2008 revenue to be between $8.53 - $8.68bn (still more money than most people will ever see). 

To be more competitive, Amazon has slashed it’s free delivery qualification costs from £15 to £5. This means that over 90% of their products will be delivered for free. I personally think this is just common sense – leading industry experts have long-advised companies to play around more with free delivery.

Google’s market-share has dipped a teeny-tiny bit. My cynical side says that this explains why they’ve suddenly backtracked on their long-standing policy not to allow gambling advertisements. Now, potentially generating £millions more with this hypocritical move, as we have already seen a quarterly increase on profit this year. I’m sure we’ll see Google beginning to strangle the competition again.

Social networks are struggling to generate viable income. Which is no big secret. Sadly though, this is directly affecting people working in the industry, as they become statistics in the economic downturn. The most recent victim is Hi5, the third largest global network, where it was announced this week that around 10-15% of the workforce would be laid off. Other companies being affected include start-ups and software; again, the most recent casualty being Jive.

When the whole world is suffering economic crisis, it’s obviously going to affect the world-wide-web. But to reiterate my original point; some parts of the digital industry will do well from the misfortune of others. Yes, it will get increasingly competitive, but with decent strategy and user-confidence, those who succeed will be very apparent. Whilst we’re seeing companies collapse every day, I hardly think this is the end of the internet.

Changing.com

In an effort to improve it’s advertising revenue, Yahoo has decided to get a new image…
And about time too.

I’m actually quite a big fan of Yahoo – possibly because they seem to be an underdog, caught between the world domination battle of Google and Microsoft – but their fussy, over-cluttered homepage has always irritated me slightly. As web 2.0 continues it’s development, and with 3.0 already arguably upon us, site design is all about simplicity, with the user’s personal needs in mind. A great example large corporations realising this, and actually doing anything productive about it, is the BBC, where, to mark the beginning of 2008, they gave their retro 90’s site a complete (and long overdue) makeover. Worryingly, although the BBC has great digital content, it’s traditional core is hardly based online, so why is it often ahead of equally as huge, solely digital-based companies? For me, that’s not really a can of worms I want to open just yet; I merely wanted to share my genuine enthusiasm that Yahoo has finally decided to embrace the concepts surrounding usability.

It seems the basic idea is that Yahoo will “choose” random users, who will provide instrumental feedback, which will then be used for redesigning the site that allegedly 300m unique people visit each month. With their last foray into design change going back to mid 2006, Yahoo seem to have finally grasped the concept that to try and rival the likes of iGoogle, they need to step up the mark. Actually, I made that last sentence up – it’s what I want to believe. In reality, it seems that following the fiasco the world witnessed when Microsoft tried to unsuccessfully buy Yahoo for $44.6bn, Yahoo is going down the path of belief that by making their site and services more user-friendly, they will both capture more users and more prominently/directly be able to advertise. Therefore new site design = greater chance of increasing ad revenue. Logically, this will probably work, and although I’m happy that change is happening, I’m disappointed it’s mainly for revenue purposes, rather than aesthetic reasons.