Online Marketing Summit (OMS) Portland Event Morning Update

I arrived at The Oregon Zoo for OMS Portland just in time for the first session of the day, presented by Thanh Ngyuen of BusinessOnLine. Her session, titled: Complete Website Strategy & Usability provided helpful insights for the non-geeks in the crowd. A few of the nuggets are outlined below:

·         Users generally cognate (read) from large to small & irregular to regular shapes as well as dark to light & saturated to less saturated colors

·         In any page layout, images trump text, while larger text trumps smaller text

·         Localization: links to alternative language sites should be above the fold (ideally in the top right “utility” corner), and flags are most intuitive way to communicate languages

·         When designing Web forms, First Name is a confusing phrase for Asian markets, while Surname is specific to European markets. Thanh recommends using Full Name to capture everything

·         She advises against big ads or promotions on the home page. Ads should be displayed ideally after the user goal is accomplished. Ads should promote products & services that are associated with the task (i.e. related products, services or activities).

·         For shopping carts, tell consumers where they are in the checkout process to decrease abandonment rates

·         Don’t ask for visitor information without giving them something of value in return (not to mention outlining your privacy policy)

·         Always include a search box on your site (ideally upper right-hand corner)

·         Users don’t read, they scan (usually the first few words of each paragraph) to write accordingly

·         Based on usability tests, users believe the Home link should appear in the upper left, while internal site navigation should be on the left side and shopping cart & related site utilities should be in the upper right corner

The next session, Danielle Forquignon with RedDot, covered Customer Life-Cycle & Loyalty Marketing. She opened up with tons of statistics regarding the issues surrounding content management systems (CMS), including the relationship tenuous between marketing & IT. She covered for primary topics in her presentation: controlling your content, reaching multiple audiences easily, driving demand through a targeted experience and engaging customers with social conversations.  While well-organized, the presentation was a bid dated in terms of messaging, perhaps because I’ve worked with CMS platform providers for many years.  The messages and recommendations, to RedDot’s credit, are timeless, but not new for experienced digital marketers. For example, CMS platforms are ideal for managing brand guidelines and messaging, which is a key message we hammered home when launching Marqui in the blogosphere in early 2005.