No Fooling

It was time for a quick makeover.

Tada!

Every year or so I try to spruce up my web site. As I've said so many times, if I don't keep my site up to date, how can I suggest that you do it? But if you read my blog (and I hope you do!), it might seem that I contradict myself on this more than your average politician. Sometimes I rant about not making needless changes. But then I go and redo my site. I'm so changeable!

Well first of all, I constantly preach that you need to periodically do something. Maybe you don't blog enough. Or maybe you don't have new products or services to offer. But as I so often say, if you want to attract visitors you have to keep doing something to show your audience (not to mention search engines) that, "Hey, I'm here!"

Second of all, this is my job. I need to keep trying things—just like you do, to be constantly updating your 'continuing education'. Although I've been doing this work for close to 30 years now (yikes!) the technology is, of course, constantly changing. Every time I run an email campaign for anyone I learn at least one new thing. Plus every emailing system is a little different and their policies are also subject to frequent change. In short, you have to be constantly doing email campaigns to learn what is current best practice.

And last but certainly not least, there were things I wanted to update. Although the obvious change is seeing my big mug (and my dog's big mug) front and center, the real change was in making the Search function easily accessible. I used to think of this site as strictly a business card site; you'd look at it once, decide to call me and that was that. But as time goes on, more and more people are actually going inside; looking for all those fabulous bits of wisdom in the blog (and in these newsletters!) So it made sense to make it easier for people to drill down. Also, it never hurts your Google ranking to have visitors digging deeper into your site.

Now I love Search functions. I preach about that constantly. But speaking of 'digging', I also know why many small web sites don't bother with Search anymore. It's hard to do well! There is nothing uglier than having a Search function which brings up no, bad results or worse still, something buried deep that you didn't want people to see! Big companies spend big money on constantly tweaking their Search to give relevant results. I think it's totally worth it—waaaaaaay better than endless menus—but only if you do it well. Am I doing it well? Please let me know!

Email Campaign Design Challenges

And speaking of learning, let's look at the design of this newsletter. I'm not entirely happy with it. To see how it should look, go here. What I would like to do, of course, is format the newsletter to be consistent with the web site theme. Unfortunately, this is not currently possible because almost none of the 'agents' (the application on your desktop or phone or tablet you use to read email) render HTML in the same way. In other words, although you can expect that a web site will look much the same when viewed in a browser like Internet Explorer or Google Chrome or Safari or Firefox, you cannot assume that an HTML email will look the same when viewed in Outlook or Yahoo Mail or GMail or Thunderbird. For whatever reason, the various email apps have not done what the browser companies did years ago: agree on a standard.

So things like fonts, may or may not display properly. My guess is that 80% of you who read this will just see some ugly 'standard' fonts rather than the beautiful Univers font I chose for the web site. Can't be helped. Outlook refuses to use custom fonts. Oops. And images? They may be squished in various ways according to however the email app likes to render pictures. Again, no standard. In fact, I am really pushing my luck with this design because a lot of little doodads simply will not render properly on very old email apps such as Outlook 2003 (which lots of big companies still use for some insane reason). At some point, though, you have to assume your audience have upgraded their computers in, say, the past ten years, otherwise you're just stuck with emails that look like they were done in 2003!

So what does this mean for you? Well, one obvious strategy most people use (and why so many email campaign designs are boring) is to use the simplest design possible; avoid anything but a big splash image and some simple text. The other common way to go is to simply design the entire piece as one big graphic-like a print ad. Unfortunately, that often means that if the email is opened on a mobile device the graphic is almost unreadable. Or, if your system has certain malware protection installed, it may block such graphics so that the email appears as a big, fat blank.

Is it all doom and gloom? Of course not. We send out lots and lots of very effective campaigns every week. I'm just pointing out some of the pitfalls and limitations that clever designers work around to get you an effective piece. Your takeaway should be this: an email campaign design will likely not be 100% consistent with your website or other marketing materials. Intricate layouts can make a big impact on your audience, but the more complex you make your design, the more it will need to be tested across a range of devices, thus driving up the cost. If you keep it simple though, you can create a great piece, at a reasonable cost, that gets real results. As with most things, it's more than just being creative. It's also a question of time vs. money.

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Like I always say, I know you're busy. Hopefully my occasional nags help you think about ways to improve your marketing. But even if you don't have a thing for me to work on at present (shocking but possible) drop me a line anyway and let me know how things are going; market-wise or otherwise. It's always good to hear from you.

Best,

JC'S KEY IDEAS FOR APRIL 2016

• Tada!
  It was time for a makeover on my website. What I was trying to accomplish and why you should care!
• E-Mail Design Challenges!
  Creating a great email campaign starts with a great email design. But there are real constraints to HTML email that you should know about.

mail@jchwebdev.com

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© 2016