Thursday, June 5, 2008
Guest Speaker Series: Maggie Hatfield
Maggie Hatfield, founder of Big Lift Marketing and former Vice President of marketing for AOL's Digital Services business, visited LaunchBox Digital on May 29th to offer her advice on user interface design, testing, and marketing considerations.
First steps. Before developing a marketing plan, it is important to have a thorough understanding of the customer need that you are solving and the target market you are serving. It may be helpful to create an outline of needs, behaviors, and sites that they consume. In addition, analyze the competition and determine how you can differentiate your product. Knowing the answers to these core questions will provide guidance for UI design, testing, marketing, and decision-making for the business.
User interface design - baseline considerations. UI design and functionality must fit with the need that you are trying to solve. Maggie emphasized the need for a clear message that explains what the business does and the problem it solves at the top of the site or on the landing page. Ideally this should also be supported with your logo or any tag line that is developed. Additionally, it is important to get users engaged quickly after landing on the homepage. "Keeping core functionality above the fold is key," and the layout should be clean and easy to navigate.
User interface testing on a tight budget. One helpful method for UI testing is to begin with holding an informal focus group (think beer and friends) that will analyze wireframes or screenshots and engage in a broad discussion about the clarity and layout of the website. Once you have a working product, you can conduct an informal "UI lab" by gathering your friends together again or ideally people from your target demographic and providing them with a sheet of actions to do on your site. You can get valuable feedback from a group as small as just five people. In addition, Alpha/Beta testing can be useful to further refine UI and scalability issues, and it may be conducted on a closed invite-only basis or openly via driving traffic to your landing page.
Startup marketing essentials. After analyzing your target market and developing a compelling message that solves a need or problem, you should develop a marketing plan of action that scales with your business. Search engine optimization and social media marketing are low-cost ways to drive traffic to your business, but they must be done creatively and correctly to be effective. User-generated content can also increase engagement on your site by allowing for self-expression and content discovery as well as pointing out usability or functionality issues. Finding complimentary businesses who will agree to cross-link or embed widgets can also be very beneficial. When you are ready to ramp up your marketing efforts and allocate more funding, you should carefully test each opportunity to understand what is working before you roll out. This might involve testing keywords, display advertising, and affiliate marketing/ sponsorships against your baseline traffic rate. Internal and external web analytics are key to tracking usage issues, UI functionality, and analyzing traffic from different advertising options.
First steps. Before developing a marketing plan, it is important to have a thorough understanding of the customer need that you are solving and the target market you are serving. It may be helpful to create an outline of needs, behaviors, and sites that they consume. In addition, analyze the competition and determine how you can differentiate your product. Knowing the answers to these core questions will provide guidance for UI design, testing, marketing, and decision-making for the business.
User interface design - baseline considerations. UI design and functionality must fit with the need that you are trying to solve. Maggie emphasized the need for a clear message that explains what the business does and the problem it solves at the top of the site or on the landing page. Ideally this should also be supported with your logo or any tag line that is developed. Additionally, it is important to get users engaged quickly after landing on the homepage. "Keeping core functionality above the fold is key," and the layout should be clean and easy to navigate.
User interface testing on a tight budget. One helpful method for UI testing is to begin with holding an informal focus group (think beer and friends) that will analyze wireframes or screenshots and engage in a broad discussion about the clarity and layout of the website. Once you have a working product, you can conduct an informal "UI lab" by gathering your friends together again or ideally people from your target demographic and providing them with a sheet of actions to do on your site. You can get valuable feedback from a group as small as just five people. In addition, Alpha/Beta testing can be useful to further refine UI and scalability issues, and it may be conducted on a closed invite-only basis or openly via driving traffic to your landing page.
Startup marketing essentials. After analyzing your target market and developing a compelling message that solves a need or problem, you should develop a marketing plan of action that scales with your business. Search engine optimization and social media marketing are low-cost ways to drive traffic to your business, but they must be done creatively and correctly to be effective. User-generated content can also increase engagement on your site by allowing for self-expression and content discovery as well as pointing out usability or functionality issues. Finding complimentary businesses who will agree to cross-link or embed widgets can also be very beneficial. When you are ready to ramp up your marketing efforts and allocate more funding, you should carefully test each opportunity to understand what is working before you roll out. This might involve testing keywords, display advertising, and affiliate marketing/ sponsorships against your baseline traffic rate. Internal and external web analytics are key to tracking usage issues, UI functionality, and analyzing traffic from different advertising options.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment