Must Design

Best In Class From Conversion IQ
The other day I complained about "pretty picture' ecommerce sites that make conversion harder. So much of ecom is ditch digging. Ditch digging to make sure you have things such as:

* Email subscription form (prefer presence to popunders).
* Clearly ECOM - looks like a store with things to sell not content to read.
* Social (easy to find theirs and easy to contribute).
* Content Curation from social / comments / reviews (should feel like a party with people who share love / interests).

* Offers, deadlines and a sense of time (of the year today is Columbus Day for example).

These examples from Conversion IQ are closer to "ditch digging" ecommerce websites. Conversion either BUYING or into a list are easier, more clear and so these designs make more money than the pretty picture websites I shared last (http://sco.lt/4ijZIH ),

Here is how Beyonce Explained her SURPRISE album:

Beyonce called the project a "visual album" and said "I see music."

"It's more than just what I hear," she said. "When I'm connected to something, I immediately see a visual or a series of images that are tied to a feeling or an emotion, a memory from my childhood, thoughts about life, my dreams or my fantasies. And they're all connected to the music."

Internet marketers and web designers should read Beyoncé’s note slowly since the visual marketing tsunami is impacting everything now as Beyonce proved.

How VISUAL is your content? How AWESOME? Up to Beyonce levels? When Beyonce introduced the album on Instragram with a single word image social media all but melted down. Here are stats from Jeff Bullas blog:

The tipping point?

With the evolution of the web there are some events that are small but significant. One of those happened on December 13, 2013. It was when Beyonce launched her latest album with an update on Instagram just captioned as “Surprise”

This broke convention.

Normally millions are spent on traditional media. Lady Gaga hyped her latest album by spending millions on bus advertising, billboards, 2 pop up stores and performed countless interviews. The result. She sold 305,000 copies in 2 weeks.

Beyonce, who has 8 million Instagram followers and over 53 million fans on Facebook decided to go straight to her fans. She decided to give the bus a miss. It was launched directly to iTunes and social media. She invoked the power of  ”World of Mouth”

The results:

* It sold 828,773 copies in 3 days

* Twitter reported 1.2 million Tweets in 12 hours

* It was the largest single week ever in the Apple iTunes store

* It was iTunes fastest selling album worldwide

Product developers, Internet, content and social media marketers need to understand the core TIPPING POINTS in the middle of Beyoncé’s results:

* Marketing is about the SOCIAL/VISUAL now.
* Rework creative if necessary to be more SOCIAL and VISUAL.

* Helps if you look like Beyonce.

* If YOU don't look like Beyonce, FIND SOMETHING that does!
* Weave SOCIAL and VISUAL into product development.

* Think about VISUALS as you go.
* Find visuals that work & double down.

* As for HELP as User Generated Content is GREAT if you don't look like Beyonce (They Might & Even If They Don't They Will Support).

Websites Are Dead Men Walking
At our Startup Factory Funded startup Curagami (http://www.Curagami.com) we've been thinking about the end of tactical marketing. When we were helping The Man make millions online we could do so with TACTICS.

When our team was 2% better at SEO, PPC or email marketing we made millions. "Catch up" time, the time it took competitors to zero out the tactical advantage, took a long time. Sometimes we had YEARS on tactics such as content marketing.

We started content marketing in 2003 and NO ONE CARED until about 2010 / 2011. Oh, our traffic, the traffic that comes from Google, is related to our content. Whoops, okay NOW we care.

As websites become more mission critical in all companies the time an elite priesthood can have a tactic to themselves is shrinking fast. Now extend our thinking about tactics and you begin to understand why the web of boxes, borders and "sites" is so OVER.

As social media scales our loyalty is increasingly to EACH OTHER. Think of how your life changes as your personal network scales:

* Search less, ask more (ask friends, followers and friends of friends).
* Consume less, collaborate more.
* Understand MORE & FASTER.
* Curate More Than Create.
* Engineer, Quant and Artist.

NOW, imagine how you DESIGN a non-website website. Here are some things you will need:

* ASKS are legitimate ONLY in a sea of legitimacy (create that).
* Collaboration depends on EASE and TRUST (get those).

* Images, Copy, Navigation & Social ARE THE SAME THING.
* Leave ROOM for their notes (user generated content).
* Curate more than you create.
* Create Siftable-like "blocks" & relate them to each other & US.

That last bullet is where artist (web designers), engineers (programmers) and quants (data analysts) collide to create an artistic experience capable of correcting itself via flexible business rules and "on call" creative.

Now imagine how to TEST in such a dynamic POOL of content, curation and near real time reactions (thanks to the social / mobile web). Today we test and validate conclusions. The orange add to cart button beats the green button.

Tomorrow we test POSSIBILITIES. Once we test "possible" Multivariate testing wins. Once MVT testing wins you MUST mashup a cross functional team (designers, quants, marketing) because A/B testing will be to static and yesterday's news.

What about you? What do you think is next in web design?