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Today’s Digital Consultant Links for July 1st

These are my links for July 1st from 09:06 to 22:18:

Art and the Web: Shape | Think Vitamin – Another fabulous Think Vitamin tutorial article by Carsonified, this time on the impact shape can have on digital design and creating enriching user experiences and e-commerce.
Small businesses warned of new EU cookie laws – Don't panic, Captain Mannering! The EU enforces a daft-ass law that says cookies (what you use to track users e.g. in your web analytics or shopping basket feature) are now to be used only with prior permission from the user. Currently only the Information Commission website uses this approach, which has seen officially recorded traffic drop 90%. This law is almost unenforceable, but we will keep an eye on the press next year for any news on how this is approached.
The Seven Performance Metrics that Matter Most – Summary of different types of online advertising performance metrics and which used by US marketers. Interesting that return-on-investment features lower than measure just focusing on traffic.
‘Digital-First’ Guardian Ends International Printing – 'Sunset' of print press is starting to slowly set, Guardian throw all into their digital strategy by ending print circulation of non-British titles.
Socially Awkward Google Tries Biggest Facebook Challenge Yet With Google+ – Summary of features from Google's new social refresh, trying to tackle the social content market (again, after the failed Google Wave and Buzz projects)
Broadband pledge for rural areas – Good news for rural UK web users: government will focus some 4G investment in improving web access and speeds, particularly in Scotland.
Obama presidential campaign devising digital strategy to reach new voters, mobilize supporters – Winnipeg Free Press – All eyes on the US as campaigner work on Obama election campaign part 2. Interestingly some focus is on building online apps that can improve the door-to-door campaigning, and even chances of 'winning' items that money can't buy, like dinner with the president.

Digital Consultant links for October 28th through November 1st

These are my links for October 28th through November 1st:

People that ‘like’ branded content aren’t customers- study – Yet more research into consumers interaction with brands in social media, this time funded by YouTube, shows users are motivated by different draws to share online – impressing and entertaining their friends is critical. Fans may ‘like’ products they aren’t yet customers of.
Internet worth £100bn a year to UK economy – New research shows UK is 6th most e-dependent nation, with a value of £100Bn (60% from consumption) and net exporters of E-goods, employing 250,000 in the e-commerce sector with growth predicted at 15%.
Virgin to roll out 100MB broadband from December – Superspeed broadband hits the UK in full force this Dec – Virgin’s 100Mb (though note the upload speed is only 10Mb) broadband sets the benchmark for other providers to offer faster connection at affordable prices, encouraged by a government fund of £300M for rural broadband, this could see Britain finally catching up with the rest of the world in our connectivity.
Planning and managing a digital strategy white paper – This is a really fantastic e-book from marketing consultancy Red Ant and covers all the considerations and planning processes you should be thinking about when planning an digital strategy. It is particularly focused around campaigns and using different methods to measure financial and non-financial success and return on investment. Brilliant!
How to Make Users ‘Stick’ to your site – Great article from web designer’s perspective on how to develop ‘sticky’ content on your site, one of my big soap box topics. Great content, encouraging engagement and great design all increase how often, for how long and how visitors will come back to your website.

Digital Consultant links for October 12th through October 15th

These are my links for October 12th through October 15th:

Almost a quarter of Europeans can’t be bothered with the net – Doesn’t matter what the bribe is at government leve, or how cheap the broadband access, it seems that 23% of Europeans just aren’t interested in being online. Phone penetration is at 98%: how long will it take to get internet usage to this point of almost total saturation?
TNS Digital Life | Internet Statistics & Social Media Usage – Survey of 50,000 web users in 46 countries with amazing visual representations of statistics to show how they all are using the internet and social media. Digital is a growing trend globally, across the world.
New Media Knowledge – BBC launches new mobile apps – As the BBC plan to launch a series of new apps for sport and news. Their Head of Future Media, Erik Huggers, talks about the elephant in the room: lack of cross platform compatability for mobile apps, which is preventing the growth of services to eager consumers. This may favour producers to move towards preferred platforms (the iphone clearly dominates here for media content).

Digital Consultant links for July 21st through July 22nd

These are my links for July 21st through July 22nd:

Arab countries ‘need a long-term digital strategy’ – I've never really considered e-strategy in the Middle East – it's not the first territory you think of when considering a high tech hub, yet countries like Oman have already invested in growing their marketplace for e-commerce and digital. According to this press release countries like Iraq don't have sufficiently developed digital strategy. Well having a safe country and telecom network may be a bit of an issue here.
The Register comment guidelines 2010 – I thought these guidelines for a heavily commented on blog were pretty sensible and worth adapting for your own community site.
Universal broadband delayed until 2015 – Another government U-Turn: the much mooted 2Mbs broadband we've been promised won't arrive until 2015, 3 years later than scheduled. The government say they are "totally committed" to having the best broadband service in Europe, but given how far we are lagging behind our European neighbours in the advancements, and right to access, faster broadband, this is more hot air.
Who owns your social media? – Superb article on the internal challenges a business faces in 'owning' a social media strategy, and the conflict and opportunity between the needs of different internal teams and departments:<br />
"Social media isn’t a two way street between you and your customer, it’s a crossroads between you, your customer, the network and all of their other customers."
Apps, Apps, and more Apps – Some beautiful design and facts on the market for mobile apps. I think this is a US only view, but the stats are quite stark: Symbian is the most popular platform by 3 to 1, far ahead of Blackberry, and trailed by iPhone. 90% of App developers don't make a sustainable return-on-investment. Are apps the news promotional tool rather than the saviour of monetizing online content?

Today’s Digital Consultant Links for March 23rd

These are my links for March 23rd from 09:22 to 23:16:

Scrolling and Attention – Jacob Nielsen, usability legend, with some very interesting research on user experience tracking in relation to below-the-fold content: 80% of users ONLY read what's above the fold, but some layout that encourage scrolling can still command attention.
5 days until Mediacamp, Nottingham’s first barcamp for creative media March 27 – If you're not following me on Twitter (please do, I'm @susioneill) I may have been remise to inform you that we're once again hosting another Mediacamp in Nottingham this Saturday. It's a day long energised discussion, presentation and exploration barcamp to discuss all aspects of how digital media is rocking our world. I'll be experimenting with social reporting, capturing highlights of the day for our website www.creativenottingham.com, and hosting a session to talk about the CreativeNottingham project and our plans. <br />
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The event is currently sold out – if you *really* want to come email me (susi@digitalconsultant.co.uk) and I'll see if I can help, otherwise they'll be live streaming of the main hall and live reporting on CreativeNottingham.com.
How to build Augmented Reality into your digital strategy – Augmented reality – building in a layer of digital information and content into real world places – is the next real innovation from the future that's already hitting our world through services like Google Goggles and Layar. This article talks about how you can bring AR into your brand's digital strategy.
Project Canvas is open and standardised – and great for consumers – The CEO of video-on-demand service Blinkbox counteracts Sky's claims that Project Canvas, providing a standardised broadband to TV service, will be bad for business. He counteracts that producers are aggregators will be able to delivery pay-as-you-watch programming and in will generative innovative 'apps' like for the iphone to provided added value services through the open network. I can't wait – this could be yet another exciting platform for technologies and video producers.
Creative funding database – Although I'm sure this is probably the same data as the funding database on Business Link site, this creative funding/business support from the excellent Creative Choices skills website works very well, it's easy to use and seems to be pretty comprehensive.
Conservatives’ ‘Cash Gordon’ web campaign backfires – And in the blue corner, the Tories have made a pigs ear of their latest venture to discredit Brown. 'Cash Gordon' site had a rent-a-crowd vibe, and was based on a back-end system used by right-wing lobbying groups against healthcare reform in the US. Trolls quickly hacked the site and used the unmoderated hashtag's on the site's display to make a disparaging remark or two. Well done Tories for going web 2.0, poor show on making such a #hashtag of it. Lessons learnt: although an election is a fast and furious thing, it's essential to allow time for user-testing of a site launch, rather than a very public flop.
Brown outlines advanced UK digital strategy – As we're all on tenderhooks for the notice of the UK election date, the parties are lining up their policies. In the red corner, Brown the encumbent plans to introduce two new bodies to advance the digital economy, An Institute fo Web Science headed up by web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, and a digital public service unit led by Last Minute.com founder and digital inclusion champion Martha Lane-Fox (one has to have double-barrelled names to succeed nowadays in government). Whilst creating two new quangos, Brown dashes against the rest, replacing 'first gen' e-government with an integrated MyGov portal (cue expensive new makeover). It will be interesting to see how the development of this policy unfolds, particularly in line with the forthcoming digital economy bill and whether this does progress through parliament despite public uproar.
Direct Marketing 2.0 – You are what you click – Net Imperative article briefing on how user insight and split-run testing can help to build better return on investment as part of a digital strategy. Some important lessons here like 'rubbish in, rubbish out' data sources, and the idea of an A-Z rather than A-B, testing iteratively all aspects of a campaign or conversion web page as an ongoing beta.

Today’s Digital Consultant Links for July 1st

Digital Consultant links for October 28th through November 1st

Digital Consultant links for October 12th through October 15th

Digital Consultant links for July 21st through July 22nd

Today’s Digital Consultant Links for March 23rd

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