Don’t Forget the Pictures!
When your organization’s work is, um, less than visually compelling, it’s easy to make images an afterthought. But before you download yet another boring stock photo, check out Hubspot’s list of statistics why visuals matter. Compelling images can impact not only viewers’ attention spans, but also result in higher retention and engagement. Here’s my favorite fact from the piece: “When people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later.” Nice!
The Best of the Best
The Digital Agency Network presented their picks for the best social media campaigns in 2018. I love this list because it features sophisticated uses of a medium many consider, well, “basic” and, um, narcissistic. And as a bookworm, my favorite is NY Library’s InstaNovels campaign.
Describe Why This Site is So Amazing
If you’re planning a website overhaul in 2019, now is the time to ask your users about your current design. Having worked on many user tests and site surveys, confusing and/or leading questions are the biggest problem I see. If you are struggling to find the right turn of phrase, this Medium piece has good suggestions for clear, well-written questions. Just change “purchasing” to “donating” (or your verb of choice). The article puts it well: “While [your users] won’t know how to improve websites, they can certainly tell you what they like or don’t like on them.”
Your Image Carousel is So 2015
I stumbled on this article about outdated web design trends. As someone who has a parallax scroll homepage, I couldn’t help but cringe a little. But I agree with everything else, including the anti-image carousel sentiment.
My Favorite Advice
Website Down? There’s an Email for That
Most of my clients want to stay out of Google Analytics if they can help it. This means setting up “intelligence events” to alert them when something’s gone horribly wrong (dramatic dip in web traffic) or amazingly right (conversions are WAY up). Here’s a great guide to setting up those emails in GA. I recommend starting with the “website traffic = zero” alert (just in case).
A Very Cool Visualization
Money Wins, Unfortunately
After midterms, I’m feeling pretty sick of elections talk. But this dynamic visualization about campaign financing is worth checking out, even if you’ve seen one election ad too many. It uses simple shapes, strong stats and clear messaging to make a compelling argument.