SEO Seeding – Electronic Arts Website

What a fascinating (and logical) way to gain higher volume traffic to your newly designed website – Electronic Arts www.ea.com – jumped right onto the Ashton Kucher vs CNN battle, publishing this press release on 16th April 2009:

In supporting Ashton in his efforts, EA is offering Kutcher’s 1,000,000th follower on Twitter a copy of every game EA makes in 2009 for the gaming system of their choice and, to have a character based on them that can be played in The Sims 3 if Ashton wins.  The Sims 3 will also donate 5,000 mosquito nets in the name of the 1 millionth person who follows Ashton on Twitter (REGARDLESS of a win).

Earlier this week, actor Ashton Kutcher announced via YouTube that the number of his Twitter account followers rivaled that of the CNN Breaking News Twitter feed, and that upon beating them to the 1 million member milestone, he would punk CNN founder Ted Turner if the Internet made it happen.  (Click here to watch the video that started it all.)

Specifically, he said he would ding-dong ditch Ted Turner’s house and post the video of it if he won the showdown.  To sweeten the deal, Ashton also promised to donate 10,000 mosquito bed nets to charity for World Malaria Day on April 24.

Check out this update on EA’s offer by Ashton: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma8AcfKGaEI

Follow EA on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/EA
Follow EA on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/ea
Follow EA on FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/EA/68678914189
Follow The Sims 3 on Twitter: http://twitter.com/thesims3
Join the race to be Ashton Kutcher’s millionth follower: http://twitter.com/aplusk

The above content, whilst short and succinct, hits every hallmark of good SEO & wider marketing/public relations:

• Keywords – Ashton Kutcher, CNN, Twitter, were some of the hottest search words around at that point in time. Relevance.
• Cross linking to high volume, highly spidered sites like www.wikipedia.org and www.youtube.com and linking to the cross promotion points on Twitter & Facebook and EA’s own Twitter pages
• Inserting the title [Sims 3] of a game which in itself is under high search keyword scrutiny and offering the coveted position of having an avatar of yourself created in one of the most popular games of of ALL time – the modern day equivalent of immortality personified – i.e. the 100 story skyscraper, with your name on the plaque at the bottom.
• EA throwing in themselves and donating 5,000 mosquito nets in the name of the millionth follower to the www.malarianomore.org campaign. Another chance of immortality and celebrity.
• The incidental prize of all 2009 EA Titles, is really just appeasing the products division – on the weight of the other PR & promotional activity, this pales in significance.

Full coverage and the new EA site here:

EA Supports Ashton Kutcher in Twitter Showdown - http://www.ea.com/news/ea-supports-ashton-kutcher-in-twitter-showdown
Malaria No More - http://www.malarianomore.org/news/features/twitter_aplusk.php

And for the record, I personally prefer the look of the older EA site…. the new white background is a sorry trade off for the cool black of the preceding site, although funtionality wise, the execution of the new site is outstanding. Maybe it’s because I spend alot of time looking at MS Word doco on the screen today, my poor eyes prefer the soft tones of black….

Technorati: State of the Blogosphere 2008

Technorati’s 5th annual report commenting on that which it focuses on so well – Blogs – citing a pot pourri of mind boggling statistics, insights and conclusions around the “State of the Blogosphere“.

The reports comprehensive nature was delivered across a 5 day period, and split across a host of areas looking at variables such as background, time commitment, income, influence and value both in the blog itself and the erstwhile Hemmingway types who dilligently peck out on their keyboards thoughts, observations and other such eloquent turns of phrase.

• Day 1: Who Are the Bloggers?
• Day 2: The What And Why of Blogging
• Day 3: The How of Blogging
• Day 4: Blogging For Profit
• Day 5: Brands Enter The Blogosphere

I was particularly interested in this, seeing as I have really only been commited to blogging on a regular basis for the past 6 weeks or so. I’ve been slowly pooling together content from a range of different sources which have made their presence known over the years – A neglected Travel Diary from 2003/2004, an experimental Image Gallery and an Areeba Facebook Page. Most recently – and most interestingly – the vast bulk of my literary inspiration has been my job, prompted by work colleagues and clients who have seen fit to pick at my thoughts from a professional work context point of view. With the hopeful intentions of applying some discipline and order to this “stream of consciousness” is the presence of this blog, which is forcing me somewhat more quickly than originally anticipated to articulate what I am hoping to be a rationale, clear, concise and engaging dialogue. Cripes.

So reading such observations within the State of the Blogosphere apparently:

Bloggers are…

• Not a homogenous group: Personal, professional, and corporate bloggers all have differing goals and cover an average of five topics within each blog.
• Savvy and sophisticated: On average, bloggers use five different techniques to drive traffic to their blog. They’re using an average of seven publishing tools on their blog and four distinct metrics for measuring success.
• Intensifying their efforts based on positive feedback: Blogging is having an incredibly positive impact on their lives, with bloggers receiving speaking or publishing opportunities, career advancement, and personal satisfaction.

On this basis, I profile myself as part of the Professional and Corporate Blogging set, but I’ve thrown in some personal stuff for good measure. It’s a mess really, by this definition.

I certainly don’t do much to drive traffic to my blog site, although I am tinkering in this area. Cross links from work colleagues, joining up to Technorati, playing around with the Tags for different search results…. Google Adwords, Adsense and some SEO/SEM activity may step in there if I can be convinced. Manually fettling the Permalink post names has been useful i.e. changing the About page to also include Colin Yeung

http://www.theculturemind.com/about/
http://www.theculturemind.com/about-colin-yeung/

Metrics for success? This is where it gets interesting. Currently I’m just writing this because I enjoy it. I’m getting asked to offer an opinion on particular things and rather than repeat it 5 times over (I hate going over ground I’ve already travelled) I’d rather write it once and reference it. However the derivations of success by the millions of bloggers out there and their levels of satisfaction with a “job well done” vary so widely that subsequently measures of success are also widely divergent. The focus by way of questioning bloggers, assessing their methods and highlighting the tools and approaches with which they are availing themselves of improved market data were all fascinating to myself and my shiny new 6 week blogging awareness.

What also had me intrigued was the notion of 5 different topics groups was the average. Looking at my list, this translates roughly as:

• Opinion on Digital/New Media
• Interesting Stuff that Makes me Smile
• A little bit about my Family here and there
• The odd Movie , Book or Website review
• Interesting & Noteworthy images and articles of cool stuff – or more correctly what I rate as cool – usually photography, cars, web culture maps (driving the office nuts in the process) and other such popular culture.

Now looking at this statistic, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a Philosophy of Science subject I took during my Uni years which assessed, theorised and extolled the notion of “natural kinds” and the empirical limit that these states enforced on a system. Looking at my above groups, they’re pretty broad. Vaguely objectified, they are Reviews, History, Opinion and Emotion (the Family & Make me Smile). Problem is they aren’t “kinds” as such, being abstracts. Gah. Stuffed up there.

Anyway, in a nutshell, there is much to learn about Blogging “successfully” and this report gets you thinking about it in a different and factually presented light, by virtue of its participants and the vast amounts of data they have put together. The eye opener for me was the droves of people who are earning upwards of $75,000 USD per year by blogging part time.

That sounds like an existence I could get very comfortable with.

Network Navigation

I’ll paint a scene for you – you represent an organisation that is either:

Type A -  multiple facilities i.e. buildings, infrastructure, assets, location. Diversified stakeholders that cover the spread across corporate, general public, specific interest groups, educated and newly aware of your offering.

Type B – is the custodian of a collective group of self sustaining brands, identities and personas i.e. the business is the umbrella marketing and operational owner of a family of best of breed products.

These represent what my esteemed colleague Simon Julian terms ‘Network Navigation’ focussed sites. Yes, you can be part of both groups whereby representation of multiple channels and being all things to all people, is a mandatory requirement. Because of the sheer volume of enquiry that they undergo both Types have site visitors that have an interest in visiting the website with the goal of learning and want an outcome to be firmly fixed into:

Type A: Where the locations are, How to get there and When to get there and what will be there when they arrive.

Type B: What product, what other products, where to buy and product specifications themselves

These are the logical outcomes of such sites. It’s what I term a somewhat ‘brochureware’ type of existence. Point & Shoot. Aim & Fire.

However, if you pause for a moment, consideration needs to be given to a raft of other areas which can be communicated – staffing & recruitment, company news, event information, shareholder enquiry etc. Existing customers and clients looking to revisit and search for updates. To extend this, these stakeholders could come to the website for specifications, support documentation and if you want to embrace Web 2.0 these very same visitors are looking for validation and confirmation via other user viewpoints – blogs, testimonials, experience driven endorsement.

Underlying all this is the driving need to clearly represent the ‘Network’ or family of products, facilities and services that the whole business represents. I’ve recently been involved in some work in network navigation website strategy and a cursory look around has yielded the following:

Epworth Health http://www.epworth.org.au – Type A

This site is really well setup from an information layout point of view, and considering it is a hospital, the branding is not too bad. I particularly like the visual treatment in the primary navigation offered around the overarching Epworth organisation umbrella vs the different facilities locations. 2nd level primary in the upper 3rd of the page is good and drills down to content with quality layout landing pages. Colour treatment could be better, but really clutching at straws here. 9/10

Museums Victoria http://museumvictoria.com.au – Type A

Again, a visually strong site, with expected branding which is par for the course for this sort of institution. Lack of a breadcrumb is a killer. Structure of events and the information design around event treatment falls away badly as the information across pages is inconsistant. On the upside, navigationally, you are always aware where you are on the site and it is easy to get around via the persistant navigation.  Annoying how it is optimised to barely skip through the screen fold – this minimal information presentation can lead to an excess of clicking around to get information being split across so many screens. 7/10

Wilson Sporting Goods http://www.wilson.com – Type B

Strongly branded, taking the product approach harnessing the strength of the parent brand and than shelving off to the 14 different sporting endeavours as required. Brilliantly executed aside from the Employment Opportunities area which is laughable in its simplicity and glaring lack of branding compared to the rest of the network. Also the dealer search arriving via the evil popup window warrants a -1 point. 8/10

Coca Cola Amatil http://www.ccamatil.com.au – Type B

Representative of Coca Cola, Goulburn Valley & Powerade, this is an average representation of how an umbrella brand can pale next to the strength of its subsidiary brands. Drilling down to find the brands themselves is a chore and you are left sitting there not even being able to decipher them, due to the miniscule size of the images, the errors on the page and the generally poor information design. Layout for shareholder information is a challenge too. Corporate Image representation is poor.  4/10

Mars http://www.mars.com – Type B

Aside from this site being devilishly slow, a strong representation of the brands from the umbrella perspective with succinct summaries and leads to the individually localised and branded websites. The site presents both flaws and strengths. There has been some strong effort at offering marketing led insight with a high level of visual interactivity, however it is let down by the somewhat skimpy treatment of key areas of information which umbrella company focussed visitors would be looking for. 8/10

Volkswagen AG http://www.volkswagenag.com – Type A & Type B

Austere. Minimalist. German. Not many people are aware that Volkswagen AG own Audi, Volkwagen Automotive & Commercial, Lamborghini, Bugatti, Seat, Bentley, Skoda & Scania. Easy to move around, the navigation is particularly easy to use and follow, mitigating the need for a breadcrumb. It could be argued that implicit notification of additional layers of navigation would be useful, but really just a minor point. 7/10

Top Quality – Consumer focused websites

Recently I wrote about my poor experiences in researching a lawn mower and the hurdles I came across in finding out the basic information I needed to make an informed choice. The manufacturer sites were all flawed in one fashion or another, with the summation of faults being a mix of poor execution or just plain devoid of any semblance of usability or consistency in the areas of:

• information presentation
• content quality including  clarity of writing, accuracy and relevence
• image use
• corporate identity & brand mark execution
• construction artifacts such as font use, breadcrumbs, navigation features & highlights

The end result is that I found the usability and the ability to perform specific tasks was found wanting in many of the sites. As a consequence a poor User Experience was the hallmark of my interaction, which led to frustration  in finding the information I was looking for. Not good for the brands in question, particularly if I was looking for a lawn mower to be reliable and “just work” I could, like many users, be tainted by my online experience with the brand in question. Really.

So, with that in mind, what do I think are good websites which portray products and consumer driven information well? I’ve chosen the below 3 for entirely different reasons. Each is markedly different in their information presentaion, layout and fucntionality, however at the heart, each IMHO meets its target audience really nicely.

Rushfaster Australia http://www.rushfaster.com.au
An online based retailer specialising in showcasing bags. The areas which stand out head and shoulders above most sites are:

Photography: simply put, it is stunning. Well shot, clear, and taken in context as to how you would want to investigate a bag, short of being there touching it yourself. There is no doubt in my mind that these guys spend big money getting professional photo shoots of the products done, as in many cases they are a cut above the bag manufacturers site itself.In
Image Size: little irritates me more than a product site with small, useless images. Rushfaster has got it right – good image size, small file size, crystal clear.
Search: using key traits of what you look for – size, type, style, brand, price – it just works. I also particularly like the calculator which works out if your laptop will fit into the bag you are looking at and offer alternatives if it doesn’t.
Shopping Cart/Checkout: easy to use, offers cross links of other product, easy to signup. Can exit and return back in at any stage.
Information Design: layout is clear, logical, comprehensive, consistant and well written, cross linked promotions and similar items are presented

Citizen Watch Australia http://www.citizenwatches.com.au
Noted by a work colleague who was searching for a watch for his girlfriends birthday. Whilst you can’t actually purchase online from this site, it is a good showcase of the products and presents a useful reference point for you to visit a store. On that, slightly annoying that such a nice website is totally let down by this one area – no list of dealers to purchase from.

Watch Search: selector with its persistant right hand side navigation bar is absolutely fantastic in its functionality and speed with which it whittles down literally hundreds of models.
Fat Footer: I’m a professed fan of the big fat footer which sits at the bottom of pages with all the ‘floating’ navigation items you are likely to want whilst browsing.
Information Design: Again, like Rushfaster, lots of consistantly arranged information and groupings of features.
Images: Watches are very personal items – the quality photography here illustrates each watch in fine detail, giving a sense of the product.

Ping Golf http://www.pinggolf.com
Now, I don’t play golf as such (yet) but know alot of people that do and the underlying thread of all these people is that when they are spending their money on new clubs, drivers and bags/buggys, they do an immense ammount of research. As a consequence, their baseline understanding is somewhat higher than your average consumer. But. The big thing about the Ping website which I noticed is that if you were a first time researcher or visitor, this would quickly become the default standard by which you rate all the other big brands like King Cobra, Calloway, Titlelist, Taylor Made, Wilson and so forth. The site really takes you on a journey in presenting information and illustrative examples which are relevent, supportive and most of all, don’t leave you lost as you make your way through the site. Really good. A nice touch is the Ping Golf Club owner letters being read out by the staff, who albeit from their biased point of view, extol the virtues of the products and make you see how everybody else is using them.

I just wanted to buy a lawn mower….

Recently I had to bow to the inevitable and admit I needed to buy myself a lawnmower. Not withstanding the change from being a bar hopping, inner city urban sort of guy, to the fact that I was now a renovating, suburban, family man with responsibilities like a backyard of knee high grass, I succumbed and started to look around for why it was lawn mowers at my local ranged from $80 to well north of $1500. What on earth? I’m only trying to cut grass and maintain civil relations with my neighbours of not being labeled “that house.”

So, thinking that looking for a product, I’d have a similar view to any other person I set out to look for the following, in no particular order:

• Specifications
• Recommended Retail Price
• Features,  Benefits and Unique Selling Point
• Where to buy – Dealer Locations

With the above goals and objectives, I proceeded to visit a bunch of different lawn mower manufacturer sites from a purely task oriented position. I had specific objectives and a set amount of time to achieve these in ie. I didn’t want to waste too much time looking. Underlying this, I think, like most people I was shopping on the following principles:

• Budget – something to fit within the specified budget.
• Intended purpose/requirement – something that addresses requirement.
• Value add – features and benefits which would justify an increase in my allotted budget.

Considering it was a lawn mower, aesthetics, usability and its desirability – hey, it IS a lawnmower – play slightly lower in the requirements. Translating this to the complex world of mowing my back yard,  I also didn’t want to be on a one way street of having to shell out lots of money for ongoing repairs and maintenance – I would happily pay extra for reliability, sturdy construction and execution of intended function. My starting budget was $500 – as good a place as any to start – with which I would use as a yard stick to rate and judge the good/bad of the machines.

So what were the good and bad with the websites I encountered?

Toro Australia http://www.toro.com.au/
Home page – nice. It is reasonably well laid out, and broken down clearly by activity/location areas into Home, Golf Course, Contractor, Stadium and Agriculture. Pretty simplistic and a nice start. Selecting “Home”, and then in turn selecting, “Walk Power Mowers”,  the page was really, really long. It waxed lyrical about the features and benefits, having little photos next to each, to reinforce that position.  The photos were bordering on too small, almost pointless. The list of models was distinguished by way of Military style call sign model designations and limited to the blade diameter and the engine model type. No Prices. No pictures of product, no descriptions on why you would go for one model verses the other…. Worst of all, and this is bad considering I have a 24″ widescreen at work, the font was rendered in tiny 6 point . The dealer locator required a postcode and/or town – worked well, although again the screen real estate could have been utilised in a better fashion. Thumbs up to the persistent primary navigation along the top of the site all the time. 6/10 for overall design and intended function but bumps downwards  for that ridiculous font size and poorly executed sub sections. 4/10.

John Deere Australia http://www.deere.com/en_AU
Even before going to this site, I knew it was going to be expensive as the Green & Gold livery of the John Deere gear is considered the pinnacle of agricultural equipment as I am reliably informed by my farm running in laws. Similarly set up to the Toro site, it breaks down equipment by activity on the home page by way of smallish images buried within a poorly executed flash navigation supported by a very hard to read vertical  labeling. A nice touch was  the presentation of a Products and Equipment section allowing  step by step navigation to the allotted equipment areas. Content structure in the actual product pages is inconsistent, some models have an image, some  have their specs detailed in bullet points (with ambiguous headings) and some of them opt for tabulated data. No prices. Printer friendly button, is initially useful for older browsers although superfluous in light of a well designed page in the first place.  Overall, penalised heavily for the inconsistent information presentation across grouped products. Also, not so cool is the lack of a com.au domain – it is a sub domain on the global site, making it difficult to market for in the region from a memorable URL point of view. 5/10.

Honda Australia http://www.honda.com.au
This Japanese manufacturing giant’s home page is the direction for a network navigation, directing you to Automotive, Marine, Motorbike, Personal Watercraft & Power Equipment. Visually, light years ahead in terms of  aesthetic design, a real credit to the design agency and the strong brand which Honda has worldwide, but dig a bit further from a navigation point of view and the site becomes extraordinarily frustrating. You can find Lawn mowers easily enough, but you have to go through each model one by one and to get back to the overview, you have to hit the browser back button – there isn’t a breadcrumb in sight! Introduction, features & specifications are all uniformly well laid out and image quality is good. The only gripe, aside from the missing breadcrumb, is the dealer locator, which works fine but launches into a totally differently branded site, which is appeasing to the network navigation demons – a jar on the user experience. Again, you are forced to hit the back button to return back to the site. 8/10.

Masport http://www.masport.com.au/
Big site. Lots of lawn mowers. Too many, in fact with little to distinguish them until you get into the detail. The landing page has good images of the product, broken up into its product range, but there is no differentiation between the ranges aside from a technical spec overview, which to novice lawn mower hunter me, meant…. not much at all. Inoffensive design (just) is simple and easy to use. Navigation is persistent. Product pages are pretty good, if somewhat plain. Picture is okay size, information is consistent and informative. No price, leading to a lack of hierarchy amongst the machines. Dealer locator is a pain in the neck to use, forcing you to wade through a clumsy inelegant super long list and worse unless you click the relevant suburb, you can’t determine what sort of dealer it is ie. President Series Only, MSV Series Only or both etc.  6/10.

Victa http://www.victa.com.au/
Similar aesthetic and navigation standards to the Masport website – minimal. 2 main groups – Domestic & Professional, sorts out the inquiry direction. You get to the landing page and you are hit with 20+ different mowers and absolutely no way to determine hierarchy or features between any of them as they all look similar. Pictures are good. No prices. Dealer locator is by far and away the best. Select a state and bang, they are all shown up for you to browse through. 7/10.

So, overall, not a great rap for the lawn mower world – all sites had failings, some of them fatal from a usability point of view, others poorly representative of the brand.  I waded through and read for an hour or so and ended up going down to the local lawn mower shop and had a chat to the experts,  and followed up with a few friends and colleagues who had already ventured down this path. 2 things jumped out at me in every conversation I had – Get an Alloy Deck & stick with either Honda or Briggs & Stratton engine. Nothing else. The ironic thing after all this toil and endeavour in which I was about to lay down the hard earned cash, is that we got given a lawn mower as a Christmas present. Got a Masport 19″ with a Briggs & Stratton 4 Stroke Engine which has been great.

Slide Share – “Social Media & Marketing Revolution or Evolution”

SlideShare is to PowerPoint presentations what YouTube is to Video.

This particular example of http://www.slideshare.net/wah17/social-media-35304 showcases the machinations of “Social Media & Marketing – Revolution or Evolution.”

In addition to the above presentation, again YouTube like, there are similar presentations from different commentator’s about the validity, reach and depth of the whole social media movement.