A new iPad App conceived and developed by Manning is part of a campaign that goes on the offensive against a CareerBuilder Superbowl ad that uses chimpanzees.

Our app, Chimps Should Be Chimps, is being used as part of the The Lincoln Park Zoo’s protest against CareerBuilder’s upcoming ad.  The story was picked up by NBC Chicago, the Chicagoist and the Chicago Sun-Times.

This CareerBuilder ad reminds us that the message of Chimps Should Be Chimps remains timely. The app allows us to reach a widespread, targeted audience and easily update and distribute the content. For fans this Sunday: if the big game is a blowout, and the commercials seem stale, there’s a another option to turn to.

NBC’s Chicago business blog, Inc. Well, did a story on us and our upcoming iPad app, Chimps Should Be Chimps. Check out the story, leave a comment, and make sure to download the app December 1st!

A New interactive  HTML5 app aims to convey personalized messages in the wake of Japan’s nuclear disaster.  Google Japan teamed up with a dance troupe Pilobolous and the band OK Go to create a video dance messenger that works in Chrome.

You should open the link in Chrome, but for your convenience here is a video version:

The programmed  choreography is truly amazing, as is the way the dancers spell out your personal message that your enter when you first launch the application.

I can only imagine the time and creativity that went into creating this. You can read more about the making of All is Not Lost – then try adding your own message to the global forum.

When it comes to building {successful} websites, appealing to a large and diverse audience requires a mastery of the web and expertise in user experience. You need to thoroughly define a strategy that will engage the majority of that large audience – and keep them coming back.  Now… take all of that complexity, and double it! This is the challenge we faced when tasked with creating a website that appealed to both B2B and B2C market segments.

You might be thinking, “Get my red staples button, that’s easy!”   But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Here are a few fundamentals that need to be balanced when creating a website that accommodates both B2C & B2B customers:

Product VS Relationship Driven

Typically, a website meant for engaging B2C customers works at converting the “shoppers” into buyers as quickly and aggressively as possible. When on the web, end consumers want sales information handy and can easily be enticed with incentives.  In many cases only one or two people are making a purchasing decision and not interested in a long-term relationship – just a quick fix to their need or problem.

When it comes to a B2B experience the focus shifts from being completely product driven to one that is based on developing a relationship. In a business scenario, the first point of contact with a website is to gather research. Content is king, and the information available online is used for comparison and discussion among peers. It is critical that you have the information they are looking for, or you may be crossed off the list. At this phase, companies aren’t ready for a hard sell – just pursuing options. Continue Reading →

Imagine going out for a big night on the town and the only money you need is found right on your smart phone. That concept is becoming a reality and near-field communication is playing an important role.

Near-field communication or NFC is basically short-range wireless technology that allows for contactless mobile payments and interactions. It’s similar in concept to RFID key cards. You basically wave your NFC enabled smart phone close to a reader and it engages with the device. NFC has a range of about 1.5 inches making it a good choice for secure transactions.

The convenience of paying with your smart phone instead of carrying around a wallet filled with cash and credit cards is why handset providers, carriers, banks and retailers are aggressively engaged in NFC development. Google was the first company to introduce an NFC enabled smart phone to the US market: the Nexus S. This summer the company is expected to release the Google Wallet app so Nexus S owners can make payments on PayPass terminals as well as store their credit cards, coupons, loyalty cards and gifts cards on the devices. Not to be outdone, PayPal just announced that it will be providing peer-to-peer payments for Android NFC phones. Continue Reading →

A new study demonstrates the rapidly increasing impact of smart phones on Internet browsing habits.  The Pew Research Center report shows that more than 40% of adult cell phone-users in America have a smart phone.  Surprisingly, a large number of these smart phone users prefer to go online using their smart phone rather than using a desktop or laptop computer.  25% report that their smart phone is their most common means of Internet access.

This growing trend will have a dramatic impact on online marketing strategies and the way web designers and developers build the next generation of web sites. Understanding how, when and why an end user surfs the Internet and engages with content is critically important to us, especially as smart phones become the web browsing platform of choice.

The worldwide smartphone market is expected to grow nearly 50% this year according to a report by IDC. The smartphone industry is growing faster than any segment of technology in history. Google predicts that half of all Internet traffic will be from mobile devices by 2013.

While we are seeing exponential growth in mobile technology, many web developers don’t take full advantage of the true potential of this market. It’s simply not enough to create a version of your current site that is based on mobile style sheets for different browsers. Our approach is to develop a new user experience model – to understand who your smartphone audience(s) is, what platforms they use, how they find your site, what information they want, and what action we want them to take. While there may be some crossover with desktop users, we believe there are significant differences that need to be considered when you develop for mobile platforms.

Mobile sites need to not only provide the best possible experience on handheld devices, they need to cater to an audience that is far more likely to be searching for content related to the local environment they’re in. It’s critical for us to be aware of emerging technologies such as QR codes, mobile augmented reality and Near Field Communication that give smartphone users the opportunity to engage with their environment in new and more meaningful ways.

With consumers expected to spend billions via mobile this year, it’s time to stop thinking of smartphones as an afterthought, and apply the same level of user experience research to mobile platform development that we do to desktop devices.

Recently, a client asked us to post a video we produced for them on their website. Posting the video was pretty easy to do. But simply embedding a video on a page doesn’t guarantee your audience will find it. In fact, every minute 35 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube alone! With so much video content competing for viewer’s attention, it’s more important than ever to develop marketing strategies for your web video content and one strategy to consider is video SEO. Continue Reading →

From the day I stepped into the marketing world, one of my first lessons was in the great debate of usability versus design. The way of thinking was, and still is for many people, that you simply cannot have 100% of both.  Meaning, you MUST sacrifice one or the other; should your website be visually spectacular and lack common navigation and web standards or should it function well and just be… kinda good looking?

For a while, I had been trying to decide which side of the fence I stood. As a digital marketer and all around #websavvy gal, I started to subconsciously analyze the websites I came across with regards to the design and user friendlessness.  What I found is that many of the websites that balanced usability and design would fall into this cookie cutter mold – logo upper left hand corner, navigation near the top, big rotating banner messages, and if the user experience was really good (these are gems) a few calls to action sprinkled in.

Continue Reading →

A while back (read: months) I happened across a very interesting survey done by Gomez, the web performance division of Compuware which focused on consumers shifting attitudes and usage of the web.

Specifically, the article I found talked about the general user’s increasing impatience with websites that are slow to load, bog down or are difficult to use. While this has been anecdotally discussed amongst folks in the web industry for years, it’s nice to finally have numbers that back up this feeling.

However, users’ ire with slow or difficult sites isn’t the part of the survey that I want to hold up for examination in this post. The second half of the Gomez survey has dedicated to the growing mobile market and users’ evolving attitudes to web access on mobile devices.

Continue Reading →