Category Archives: digital media

August 18, 2015 · 9:30 am

Lightening The Load

If there is one thing that seems to have happened over the last 15 years, it’s the growth of ADD.  That’s right – it seems as if most of us have some sort of Attention Deficit Disorder which manifests itself via an inability to stay focused and patient as we use our devices.  After all, what’s more frustrating than clicking on a link and waiting and waiting and waiting for the page to load?  Sometimes it’s due to a lousy connection to the internet.  Most of the time, however, it’s probably due to how the publisher has built the page.  I can hear you muttering that “he’s gone all wonky today” but stay with me.  There is a broader business lesson here.

Web pages are a series of elements.  The page code processes them and does everything from display pictures to send analytics data to a server  to format text to pull ads out of a marketplace.  Each of these things takes a little time and the more of them there are, the longer it takes the page to load.  Graphics intensive content – slide shows, autoplay videos, etc. – take a VERY long time to get ready.  I think part of why people use ad blockers is because they very often cut load times substantially.

GQ, according to an article I read in Digiday, focused on decreasing page load times.   Maybe that was less convenient for their writers or editors, but they decluttered their article pages, moved to a unified content management system, and did some other things that resulted in an 80% decrease in page load times.  That focus on their reader has paid off:

For GQ, having a faster site, along with features like new article pages and article recommendation widgets, has paid off in helping audience growth. Traffic jumped to 11 million uniques in July, the first full month of the relaunch, from 6 million in June, per the site. (Those are the site’s internal Omniture figures; comScore’s July numbers weren’t available at press time). Median time spent on the site rose to 7.8 minutes in July, from 5.9 in June. The benefits have extended to advertisers. With people spending more time on the site, along with bigger and repositioned ad units, the interaction rate on ads rose 108 percent.

The lesson for any of us is that staying focused on the customer experience pays off, sometimes in ways we don’t anticipate (who would have thought ad interaction would rise!).  Maybe lightening the load made their wallets heavier. Not a bad tradeoff, right?

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August 10, 2015 · 12:19 pm

Too Much?

You are reading this on some sort of screen.  It may be on your laptop or a tablet or even on your phone.  Hopefully, you don’t consider it to be wasted time.  You do lots of other things on those screens as well: your email, social media, and other forms of staying connected as well as being entertained and informed.  All of that screen time adds up – some estimates have it over five and a half hours each day.  That doesn’t include the four and a quarter hours we spend with traditional TV either.

Apparently, many people feel guilty about it, according to a report in eMarketer:

In a July 2015 study by YouGov and The Huffington Post, 54% of US internet users said they spent too much time using digital devices, including computers, mobile phones, TVs and video game consoles. Responses were even between males and females. However, feelings of too much screen time correlated with age. While respondents from every age group were more likely to agree that they spent too much time with screens, younger consumers were far more likely to say so compared with their older counterparts.

I don’t share their guilt. After all, the tools we use for all of this communication and entertainment are just more efficient ways to engage in activities which we’ve been doing all along.  If anything, I find them too efficient.  We all have access to far more information and to many more entertainment options than ever before.  What were we all doing before these screens (and I realize that if you’re under 25 you probably don’t have any memories of a world without them) to keep in touch?  Phone calls, I know, but they were inefficient.  How many friends could you reach out and touch in a day?  Snail mail? Between the time it took to compose, write, and deliver a letter to a friend or a group of them, a week could have gone by.

I’m not guilty about the hours I spend with my screens.  Too much time?  Not at all.  I celebrate them because they make me smarter, more informed, and better connected.  I might have been anyway but not as efficiently or with such wide range.  You?

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August 7, 2015 · 10:01 am

The Lord Helps Those That Yelp Themselves

Let’s end the week with a Foodie Friday post about reviews.  There are lots of studies that will tell you just how important “social proof” is as consumers are checking out a prospective buy.  People want to take comfort in knowing that they are making a choice that others have made and felt good about.  Over 70% of Americans say they look at product reviews before making a purchase, and I suspect the number is no different for restaurants.  Because of that, it’s incumbent on every business to check out their reviews.  For restaurants, that means Yelp.

We went out for dinner the other night and I decided to post a review of the place.  We’ve been to this place a number of times over the years and love it, so I thought a positive review would be a nice thing for me to give in addition to my patronage.  Most of the reviews of the place are quite positive.  There were, however, a few one-star reviews (roughly 10% of the total) and they are what bring up the business point today.

You can’t let bad reviews hang around like an old plate of food.  They must be dealt with or eventually the smell will overpower everything else.  Bad reviews are also a great source of research.  In this case, there were complaints about undercooked rice on a few nights.  Who was cooking that night?  A couple mention slow service – was someone absent?  Sometimes the reviews are unfair – complementing the food and service and giving the place one star because you think the neighborhood is “sketchy” isn’t accurate.

So what do you do?  Read every review carefully – you can learn from the good ones and learn more from the bad.  If it’s bad, maybe you want to figure out if this is a legitimate complaint or just a troll (check out the reviewer’s other posts).  You’re going to respond either way.  Apologize, lay out the facts as best you can gather them, and promise to do better if given another chance.  Remember that most of the people reading reviews have no opinion of you (or the reviewer).

A recent Washington Post article mentions that most restaurants don’t hear directly from customers while they are having an issue.  Instead, 80% go home and write something.  Your reputation is one of any business’ most valuable assets.  You need to monitor it and, to the extent possible, control it.  Fair or unfair, that’s reality!

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