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When working in PR/Marketing, it's only a matter of time before you will be asked to help redesign a website. If you are one of the lucky few who never has this task (not to say it's not enjoyable, it's just tedious) then "Lucky you!" You still need to understand the ins and outs of a good site, in order to strategically place ad campaigns. 


Tell the Brand Story
A website serves as the "home base" for your brand. The strategy behind a website should be to create an accessible and easy-to-use website that embodies your organization's brand and legitimizes your message. When a marketer is speaking on the phone to the media, referencing his or her company to clients, or providing feedback to a board of directors, it is important to have a website that represents the entire company and highlights the significance of the work being done. In some sense, a website should tell a story on its own -- as a website visit can be a one time chance to capture the attention of the user.


Aesthetics 
Web layout and visual appeal are key. It is important to keep the branding consistent across the board for an organization or company, so the color palette for the website should align with the logo and other existing branding. A website should also use color combinations that make the text readable and easy to recognize (sometimes dark colors on dark backgrounds can make text undetectable). Consistent branding is also important as often users visit the site after tying a keyword into a search engine, such as Google. It is important that they recognize where they are and that the site branding confirms that they have come to the correct place. Otherwise, they will immediately exit the site and, thus, contribute to the "bounce rate" in your site analytics (something you'd rather keep low - trust me!)


Navigation & User Experience 
Visual appearance is only part of the equation for the perfect website. The navigation and layout of the site are also critical to creating a comfortable, easy environment for users. The "user experience" is what determines popularity of a site, the number of page visits, and the length of time that one user will spend browsing content. If a site is easy to navigate - meaning the navigation is intuitive, well marked, and fast- then the user will be happy. From that point on, good content will speak for itself. Interesting reading, helpful material such as downloadable PDFs, and interactive video will capture the user's attention. Content should be written in plain English- no clinical jargon or academic prose.


Know Your Audience
Keep in mind the unique needs that your users may have, as well as their expectations. You want their experience at your website to be a memorable, pleasant experience. Whether that means going out of you way to make online accommodations for vision or hearing impaired users; streaming news feeds or stock market updates to maintain user attention; or providing a "one stop shop" portal for users to access a list of resources, in addition to your site, that might meet their needs if they did not find what they needed at your site.  Much of the reasoning behind choosing a site layout should be to make the user experience easy for all audiences: community members, educators, physicians, students, and patients who may be accessing the site as a resource. When considering a patient, it is important to remember that some times symptoms of an illness can make everyday tasks challenging. Just another reason to tailor your user's web experience as best you can. Enabling access for people of all abilities is key to building a sustainable website.


Personalize it!
Website personalization is an area where health communicators have to proceed with great caution. Any app or login feature would need to be highly secure in order to protect patient health information and confidentiality. A login feature gives users who frequent a site the ability to participate in multiple event registrations, surveys, or webinars without re-entering registration info each time. Instead, the form would pre-populate with their info, made possible using cookies. Personalization does greatly enhance user experience. The information that users volunteer when they login, becomes an important piece of intel for marketing strategy. We will discuss this in a future post. 


Mobile Ready
Finally, in the current times it is crucial that a website be "skinned" for mobile devices. Everyone accesses the web via iPhones, Androids, iPads, eNotebooks, etc. and a company can miss out on an opportunity to engage a user if the website shows up in very poor quality on a mobile device. Nothing is more frustrating to a user then finding a website and then realizing that it is impossible to access half of the site because it goes off the screen. 


Do the work for your user - make the content easy to access. For me, this is the real message when it comes to website best practices for websites.

References:


http://www.homebaseprogram.org/ http://ask.enquiro.com/2010/a-big-list-of-user-experience-best-practices/

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/11/best-practices-for-6-common-user-interface-elements/

http://mobilewebbestpractices.com/user-experience/


This article is the part of a series of posts that I will make throughout my graduate studies in Marketing and Communications. With a focus on both healthcare and interactive marketing, I hope to gain a better understanding for effective health messaging--which I think plays a key role in a happy, healthy society. Please leave your comments or write to me: camorous@gmail.com.

Understanding Cookies

What are cookies?

Let's be frank. You hear people talk about cookies all the time --no, not the chocolate chip kind, the internet kind. Everyone pretends to know what they are, cause who wants to look like an idiot? But let's face it - do you really understand them? Honestly, I'm not sure I'm there myself. But, I just wrote a short piece on them for class and I thought I'd share this batch : )

Cookies are small data stores that live on a computer's web browser. The browser will use cookies to store data about that user's web activity. According to the BBC's Webwise Blog:

When you visit a site that uses cookies for the first time, a cookie is downloaded onto your PC. The next time you visit that site, your PC checks to see if it has a cookie that is relevant (that is, one containing the site name) and sends the information contained in that cookie back to the site. The site then "knows" that you have been there before, and in some cases, tailors what pops up on screen to take account of that fact. [1]

This means that cookies can store info about the number of times you have visited a page, the length of time that you spent there, what links you clicked, and what types of browsers you prefer to use. This information can help make your user experience easy and more enjoyable by removing duplicate information, remembering favorite info, or giving you the content that you requested in a search.

Benefits

Cookies have enabled online shopping to expand through the use of a shopping cart feature that "remembers" desired items and "holds" those items for you, even if you exit the site. With a login feature that references info in your computer's cookies, you can return to that site and keep browsing with the same contents in your shopping cart.

The information captured through cookies can also provide key intelligence to inform brand-marketing strategy. By understanding what sites a user frequents, how often they visit, and where user's general interests lie, a company can effectively place ads. Ideally, the brand can target the user with ads for a product or item of interest and there is a higher probability that the user will actually click on the ad and generate revenue for the site host and the brand (if the user purchases the product).

This method of targeted advertising can be very cost-effective, as it matches marketing efforts with the targeted audience: an engaged population that is actually seeking the product and looking to fill a need. Cookies also give the brand a great advantage and insight into understanding user behavior. Cookies allow the brand to capture real time research data on the users interest, which can influence their entire strategy, constantly keeping an approach fresh and relevant.

Controversy

There is a downside to cookies, however, which is that users are often skeptical of the idea that information is being stored about them. Many feel that their privacy is infringed upon and this unease can affect a user's trust in a brand. Despite the fact noted by Larisa Thomason from NetMechanic that "Cookies cannot store any personal information about the user that the user doesn't voluntarily supply to the Web site,"[2]  people are still uneasy about the presence of cookies.

Some users dislike the idea of being targeted by marketing campaigns or having their web browser ads tailored to their interests. There has been some controversy over the legality of cookie use.  In the Guardian, Joanna Geary makes the "sneaky" function of a cookie clear:

The cookies that appear to cause the most controversy... are for managing the advertising you see on a website. This is particularly the case when websites set a cookie from a separate advertising delivery company. This cookie can record when and where you saw an advert, where in the world you might have been when it happened and whether you clicked on it. The cookie will send this information to the cookie owner, who records this data and uses it to make sure you don't see the same advert too many times.[3]

The consensus seems to be that cookies are harmless. For users that dislike the idea, there is always the option of blocking cookies-- which may make the web experience less fluid, as many sites do not operate well without cookies. Most sites have a cause within their "Terms and Conditions" that states that by using the site, you are agreeing to download the site cookies. A good site will also take the time to explain how the brand uses cookies and why they do so.

---

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/guides/about-cookies

[2] http://www.netmechanic.com/news/vol3/beginner_no5.htm

[3] http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/23/cookies-and-web-tracking-intro


This article is the part of a series of posts that I will make throughout my graduate studies in Marketing and Communications. With a focus on both healthcare and interactive marketing, I hope to gain a better understanding for effective health messaging--which I think plays a key role in a happy, healthy society. Please leave your comments or write to me: camorous@gmail.com.