Garrick Van Buren be discussing how Cucumbers are the future of interaction design artifacts, prototyping, and User Experience design.

DATE & TIME
May 10, 2010 (2nd Monday of the month)

LOCATION
Wilde Roast Cafe parlor room
518 Hennepin Ave. E. • Minneapolis, MN 55414
612.331.4544

My notes for the conversation

Registration is $30 that includes the afternoon of co-working @ CoCo, or $15 just for Chank’s session.

To register and for more information – visit CoCoMSP.com

I established a leadership consulting firm in 2002 to provide executive coaching services and leadership development courses to leaders in organizations of all sizes and types. I launched a new website in December 2009 and experimented with some advertising to drive traffic to the site. Here’s what I have learned.

Analytics
Watching where people go on your website is critical to adjust your content to match their interest. My first website was more of an electronic brochure. It was fine for people I had met in person but was not sufficient to make a first impression on its own. When I launched the new website last December the design was much better thanks to a friend of mine who is a graphic designer. The web designer who implemented the site added analytics so I could see the traffic patterns. It was amazing to see where people went on the site and it caused me to add some content. One of the most popular areas turned out to be information about my past clients so I added a client list and some client success stores to go with the testimonials I had there. These are some of the most trafficked areas on the site now.

Advertising
I initially experimented with LinkedIn Ads which worked very well. I had noticed that I was getting a lot more traffic to my LinkedIn profile than my website so I decided to try a line ad with LinkedIn to drive people to my website. It started driving traffic to my website the first day I ran the ad. The system was very easy to use and LinkedIn has a lot of profile information for their members so I could really pick and choose who you I wanted to view the ad.

I also tried Google Adwords and Facebook Ads and ultimately found Facebook ads to be the most cost effective of the three. It’s not as targeted as LinkedIn but makes up for that by being a lot less expensive. Google Adwords is a little complicated. There are two different systems. There’s the Keyword system that puts ads in Google searches that match the keywords you list for the ads. I didn’t get many clicks that way. Then there’s their Network system that places ads on appropriate websites. That’s where I got most of my clicks which were very cheap. Unfortunately not many showed up in my analytics so I suspect that some of the sites were charging for clicks that weren’t happening.

I initially paid for impressions but found paying for clicks to be a much easier way to impact the volume of visitors to my website. Most of these internet advertising programs use a bidding system to determine what ads run. I paid for impressions at first but found very quickly that I worried a lot less about the cost if I just paid per click. Watching your impressions, click through rates and cost per click can become a bit of an obsession. Paying per click eliminated all that and allowed me to impact the volume of visitors much more easily. Since I was initially in a hurry to get views to one of my programs I put in a high bid to get more clicks. The bid was more competitive with other bids so it ran more and got more clicks. The program I’m currently advertising is less time dependent so I’m bidding lower because I’m more interested in cost effectiveness. I’m getting a lower volume of clicks but at a lower average cost per click.

Website Lessons
I found that my content was not very effective at getting people to stay on my site. The ads I run land on specific pages of my website that describe the programs I’m advertising. I noticed that a lot of the visitors were bouncing, looking at just that page and then leaving the website without looking at other pages. When I looked at the pages where I was sending them I realized that there were no pictures and no links to other areas of my website, other than the standard menu. It was nothing but a text description of the program. A rookie mistake I suspect. I added pictures of the instructors for our class with links to their bios. I started to get more people to stay on the website and view other pages. I also noticed that the visitors coming from Facebook didn’t bounce as much as the ones from LinkedIn or Google. When I tracked the cost for each system I calculated the cost per no bounce visitors as my final determination of effectiveness. This is where Facebook came out way ahead. Here are the links to the landing pages for my ads.

http://www.caravela.us/pages/programs/course_effectlead.html
http://www.caravela.us/pages/programs/exec_coaching.html

The final lesson I learned is that I need a way to collect visitor data. Although I’ve had about 250 people visit my website through the ads I’ve run – I don’t know who any of them are. Our sales cycle is very long so I need a way to capture people’s contact information and stay in touch with them over time.

Good luck. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or if you have any suggestions on how to do all this better. I think we’re all still trying to figure all this out.

Here’s some key bullet points from their job description.

• Design and produce Internet/web, landing pages, HTML emails and Flash projects
• Presents wireframes, design concepts and rationale to management for all interactive projects
• Works with creative and eMarketing team from initial concept to final deployment
• Work with outside vendors on producing creative/interactive projects or digital assets

• Highly proficient in Dreamweaver, Flash, Illustrator, Photoshop, HTML, XHTML, Action Scripting and other Web applications dealing with coding (Mac/PC)
• Proficient in InDesign and other print applications?Highly proficient in web development (Flash, CSS, JavaScript, XHTML)
• Highly proficient in Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and other types of interactive applications
• Excellent knowledge of Microsoft Office Suite and Visio like products
• Knowledge and experience in print applications’

More info in the full job description

We’ll be discussing a The Web Content Strategist’s Bible: The Complete Guide To A New And Lucrative Career For Writers Of All Kinds. The author, Richard Sheffield, will join via video-conference.

When reading the book, please write down your answers to these topics/questions and bring them with you — they will drive our discussion (yes, you can still join us if you haven’t read the book):

What did you like about the book?

What did you dislike or perhaps not understand?

Will this book influence how you work or think about work?

DATE & TIME
Monday, February 8
6pm – 8 p.m.

LOCATION
Wilde Roast Cafe
518 Hennepin Ave. E. • Minneapolis, MN 55414
612.331.4544

But it’s winter in Minnesota – and you need to get out more – so come over to CoCoMSP the new collaboration and co-working space in Lowertown St. Paul on Monday, January 11th 7-9pm for the inaugural ColdStart Happy Hour.

ColdStart is an initiative – by Todd Emmel and me – bring together our local startup tech community more frequently and more informally.

RSVP at http://coldstart.eventbrite.com

This particular product manager manages all instances of user interface….

Responsible for managing the entire product lifecycle: building, launching and delivering products to market….

Develop detailed requirements document that specifies solution requirements and acts as the contract with development

5-7 years experience in Product Management and/or software design, preferably in the financial services or supply chain providers or proven success in financial process change management. Direct experience launching web-based products or services…

 Experience in software and product design, user interface design, storyboarding, focus groups, product requirements gathering and documentation. Track record of influencing the product development process through customer insights…

If those bullet point pique your interest – review the full Syncada Sr. Product Manager Job Description [doc] and apply.

REQUIRED SKILL SETS:

Minimum of 10+ years web/online marketing and/or Agency experience, with minimum 3 years developing and directing online community and communications initiatives; experience on either client and agency sides a plus
Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing, Business or a related field; MBA preferred
Proven track record in social media including blogging, blogger relations, podcasting or other means of evangelizing on behalf of a large enterprise

Expertise and in-depth knowledge of social media channels including but not limited to:

1. Communication channels (e.g., blogs, internet forums, micro-blogging (twitter), social networking sites (e.g., Facebook, MySpace), event sites (e.g., Meetups))

Collaboration Channels (e.g., Wikis, Digg, epinions)

2. Multimedia / Sharing Channels (e.g., Flickr, YouTube)

Successful track record in the development and integration of social media relations with traditional public relations outreach communications programs

for more info – contact vnauen@genesis10.com

]]> http://mnteractive.com/archive/job-wanted-to-social-media-strategist-to-join-medtronics-global-emarketing-team/feed 0 http://mnteractive.com/archive/job-worrell-needs-a-user-experience-designer http://mnteractive.com/archive/job-worrell-needs-a-user-experience-designer#comments Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:41:17 +0000 Garrick Van Buren http://mnteractive.com/?p=1434 This is easily my 2nd favorite job posting ever on MNteractive.

“We are seeking a User Experience (UX) Designer…We want you to write the description for this position. For lack of a better term, we’ll call this a reverse job description. Your description should be perfectly tailored to you. This is your opportunity to inspire us.“

In addition to the reverse job description, there’s a few things they’re looking for – here’s the checklist:

1. Write “UX 2009″ in the subject line of your email.
2. Your reverse job description
3. A cover letter
4. A résumé
5. A few relevant work samples
6. A link to your website, if applicable

To get you started, I’ll take care of the first one for you

]]> http://mnteractive.com/archive/job-worrell-needs-a-user-experience-designer/feed 4 http://mnteractive.com/archive/mounds-view-a-lake-thats-seen-better-days http://mnteractive.com/archive/mounds-view-a-lake-thats-seen-better-days#comments Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:48:51 +0000 Garrick Van Buren http://mnteractive.com/?p=1432 A neighboring suburb’s struggles with branding and marketing made the front page of my neighborhood newspaper this week.

From the article “Mounds View continues discussing new tagline” by Kate Garlock, it sounds like a case of equal parts design by committee and crowdsourcing.

Both of which are fine, well-worn strategies and both have a significantly lower upfront price tag than the alternative – hiring a branding firm specialized in municipalities.

Seems to me the question is whether Mounds View is looking for a single all-encompassing solution that will serve the city well for years to come – or a quiver of potentially giggle-inducing, community-owned solutions.

The opportunity exists to pull off the latter. It will take as much commitment, organization, and leadership as going back to square one and bringing in the professionals.

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