Since your website is an important part of your brand, you've got to think about the content of the former as representative of the latter. You've just got to. To a potential consumer online, what your brand represents is nothing more than the content of your website. This means that if that content fails or is unconsidered in any significant (or, in fact, even in any seemingly insignificant) ways, your brand is in danger of representing this failure.

Given this framework, some decisions that may seem like good strategic ideas are in fact bad. The reason for this is an assumption on your part about your ability to provide a coherent semblance of total information, while at the same time actually providing either partial or exaggerated information. In a word, you're trying to trick, omit key information from, or (even worse) lie to your users. And it's not going to work.

"You guys don't have to trick me! You're my friends!"

Read More...

Dear Amazon.com,

Hi, I'm Paul: Long-time fan, first time complainer. First of all, I want you to understand that I know shipping is getting more expensive, and that it's cutting into your profit margins. Especially, I am sure, as concerns your long-standing offer of free Super Saver Shipping. But a nag?!?

Original image via The New York Times.

I just ordered two books from you, with Super Saver Shipping, and I now see on my account that they're (a) in stock, and (b) not going to depart from Amazon for ten business days. What else could this be? It didn't used to take ten business days to ship my purchases to me!

Again, in sympathy, there are way better ways to handle this. For example, why not just charge me a dollar a book for Super Saver Shipping? Then I could get my books on time, your profits could equalize, and we could both be happy? As it stands, neither of us are. At least you could have the decency to just tell me that part of the new Super Saver deal is a shareware-esque nag. I might have just upgraded my shipping plan if I knew what I was in for. As it stands, I'm just cranky.

Gripingly,
Paul

On Saturday, I proposed something to ponder over the weekend. Namely, I suggested that we all think, over the weekend about the possibilities of a brand and design strategy that takes into account multiple degrees of control, in the various registers of user experience.

This is a deep and complicated question, and whatever strategies will be used to resolve it will likely involve brand strategies that are downright alien to the ones we know today. Why this might necessarily be the case, I thought, may give us some deeper insight into moving forward on this difficult problem. After all, diagnosis is one thing, treatment is another.

Read More...

Jonathan Baskin wrote an interesting post over at his Dim Bulb blog last Wednesday, about the relationship between brands in a search-driven world. His contention is that "search is the anti-brand," by which he means that while "corporate marketing is still focused on optimizing search terms to promote the stuff of branding, consumers are already past that step."

I would argue that even if there's a real trend to support this particular piece of hyperbole, it's not exactly time to throw in the towel on old-style declarative brands, at least in most industries (e.g. Nick's cheez-flavored crackers: ain't nobody increasing the profit margins on these with an internet search. Now, a catchy jingle...).

Nevertheless, Baskin is making an important point: The climate is changing, and there are contexts in which potential customers interact with a brand, which aren't subject to a traditionally branded experience. The challenge for designers inside of this climate is to evaluate potential responses to sort of brand DMZs. Which is exactly his point.

From where I'm standing, though, we can't just throw the baby out with the bathwater. Traditional branding techniques are still relevant, and I believe will continue to be for the near future. They are going to provide the substratum for user experience in a variety of contexts, even if they don't work exactly the same way they used to.

Hence, your weekend ponderable: Meditate on the possibilities of a brand and design strategy that takes into account the multiple degrees of control possible in the various registers of user experience.