Unless you’ve been living in a cave of late, you’ll know that Pinterest (Pin-ter-est), subject of fawning coverage on and offline, is the new darling of social media.

Pinterest has been around for quite some time, with an established US user base of around 12 million. Of those, 80% are female, aged 25-44, interested in interior design, crafting and event planning and creating pinboards full of images about their perfect homes, dreams and ‘projects to do’.

In the UK, though, Pinterest is currently dominated by bloggers, PR types and SEOs – all exploring the marketing possibilities it offers. While we can expect the UK audience to start reflecting that found in the US in time, for now the majority of the UK’s 250,000 or so users are men aged 25-34.

For most non-marketing users, Pinterest’s popularity lies in its intuitive extension of the ‘bookmarking’ meme popularised by services like del.icio.us and carried into Facebook ‘Likes’.

Pinterest allows people to create curated pinboards of pictures on any theme they choose. Whether you’re planning your wedding, decorating your lounge or shopping for summer dresses, you can pin things you like onto a board, make notes, share with friends and followers and repin things you like that others have found. It can be quite addictive and a great way to discover new things that interest you.

Pinterest discourages boards created to promote a single company or product range, and boards which aren’t interesting, thoughtfully created and filled with beautiful, inspiring, helpful or unusual images won’t inspire users to follow you or repin your items. Pinterest is certainly not a ‘push marketing’ arena.

So what is the opportunity for businesses?

If you do have the time to invest in curation, and the willingness to link out generously, active involvement on Pinterest could help you reach out to this target audience.

You can encourage pins on peoples’ boards by adding a Pin button to images on your website, but as the majority of active Pinterest users Pin via a toolbar, you may find you’re already being pinned.

Find out if you already have some Pinterest fans by search for your domain name (e.g. http://pinterest.com/search/?q=www.etsy.com)

If you’re hoping to be pinned, make sure your images have the ‘wow’ factor.  Standard product shots that can just as easily be found on other sites won’t create a Pinterest buzz – you need to stand out from the crowd.

Pinterest users agree to only pin images if the copyright holder approves. If you use images under licence, check the owner is happy to have a pin button on the pictures. By proactively inviting a pin, you are implying that consent has been given.

Pinterest is definitely one to watch, and if you like to be ahead of the game, it’s definitely worth a closer look. You’ll need time and great photography to succeed in a big way, but there’s no harm in creating few boards, identifying active pinners in your marketplace and making some friends now. Then, when you do have a show-stopping item to promote, you’ll have a fantastic network in place to help.

Want to know more? Get in touch with Denise.

The W3C have announced they will work with Adobe, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Stanford University and others to create an official ‘Do Not Track’ standard. There is no confirmation as yet that their move was prompted by True’s recent Cookies for Breakfast Seminar…

For those of you who missed it, here are the highlights:

• The ICO is unlikely to enforce the cookie law in the UK until 26 May 2012.

• The maximum penalty for non compliance is £500,000.

• Even if the ICO allows browser settings to be used to accept cookies, 80% of people use browsers which aren’t sophisticated enough to do so.

• Sites need to persuade visitors to accept cookies and plan for life without them.

• We can help you trial non-cookie based analytics – a non cookie based javascript solution is currently under development.

• The cookie law could set online media back 10 years – media providers and the IAB are lobbying the government for compliance that won’t kill the industry.

• Companies should work on a prospect model based on existing client data and forge relationships with new networks as insurance.

• Facebook’s recent changes to the Timeline model may have been a smart move, despite the initial bad publicity.

If you’d like to know more, or request your very own True 7 point action plan to handle the new cookie legislation, get in touch with Jack. He’ll be happy to help.

Adobe has announced it’s calling time on the mobile version of the flash player, and has pulled support for development for TVs. This means the desktop is the only area where the flash player will continue with any clear support for the near future.

Initial reactions from the development community range from rejoicing and anger at Adobe for effectively dropping a technology that many people have invested their careers in.

Adobe has said that version 12 of the desktop version of the flash player will allow a ‘smooth transition to HTML5 as the standards evolve so developers can confidently invest knowing their skills will continue to be leveraged.’ What form this leverage will take is yet to be defined.

As I wrote recently, Adobe have been making positive moves by throwing their weight behind open standards, but in the process maybe they’ve lost sight of the need to support customers who brought into the flash ecosystem.

Adobe’s message is inconsistent: why kill development in new markets but not on the desktop? Do they really not see that mobile and desktop are interlinked? If only they had stayed ahead of the game, they could have created a great version of the flash player for mobile as well as the desktop.

Adobe’s blog page announcing of the end of mobile and TV flash player development closed after just one day of answering a number of unhappy blogger’s messages. It seems the transition to a standards based company hasn’t been as smooth as it could have been.

Recently Adobe submitted a proposal to the W3C working group recommending its CSS3 Regions technology as a web standard. Stefan explains why he is right behind the move:

CSS3 regions dictate how type behaves in a web page. With it, text can:

• Move or flow between text blocks and columns, much like an interactive newspaper.
• Act differently depending on region – so you could flow text from a 20 pixel purple comic sans text block into a 10 pixel times new roman block.
• Display in shapes, not just standard rectangles which CSS spec currently supports.
• Interact with other elements in the page in a way that has only been possible up to now with a great deal of work and plug-ins like flash.

Adobe is currently promoting its CSS3 regions abilities using browsers that are built around the open source webkit rendering engine. That’s the same engine behind browsers such as Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome. The forthcoming tablet PC Amazon Kindle Fire uses webkit in its own browser called Silk.

Adobe’s applications can deploy to all platforms, including mobile, tablet and desktop from just one eco-system. The future looks bright for webkit as a dominant browser. Internet Explorer’s market share erosion is Google Chrome and Apple Safari’s gain  – and this is exactly the company Adobe would like to be keeping.

Their move towards web standards dates back to the fall out with Apple over Flash player (or lack of) on the iPhone and iPad iOS platform.

Leveraging features found in Adobe’s Creative Studio as web standards will make them much more resilient. HTML elements and CSS properties are usually removed at a much slower pace, and only when they’re a really bad idea. Remember the Blink Element?

Tying themselves so closely with web standards will offer Adobe greater protection and hopefully avoid the “roughing up” they’ve experienced at the hands of Apple in the past.

Since HTML5 took centre stage, they’ve been trying to find the next big thing to replace Flash. It could have easily been their Quark Xpress moment, and buying TypeKit which uses web standards to allow custom fonts to be used on the internet is a clever move.

Want to read more:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/html5/articles/css3-regions.html

And a video about it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CZKMNXBugdg

Join us at 8am on Thursday 27th October for a breakfast seminar on cookies.

We’ll explain your options for some of the biggest issues that opt-in will cause, examine the pros and cons of various web analytics solutions, and give you real solutions to stop your Media ROI plummeting if people refuse ad company cookies.

At the end of the hour you’ll understand exactly what is and isn’t necessary to meet the ICO’s current expectations.  You’ll be equipped to make the best decisions, have all the right questions for your third party suppliers and know what steps you need to to take towards compliance.

Put the date in your diary now!

Date: Thursday 27th October

Time: 8am  – 9.30am

Location: Central Bristol

On the agenda:

• What is the directive and what does it mean for you?
• What you can and can’t legally do without opt-in permission.
• How likely are the public to give you permission?
• Exploring your options.
• Specific solutions for three of the highest impact issues.
• Things to consider, including how not to break another law by trying to comply with this one!
• Your next steps.  A simple 7 point plan to work towards compliance.

If you’d like to attend please email Jack ASAP as places are going fast.

In the second installment of our allegory series, we explore why it’s bad business to design for everyone.

Meet Luca, a designer for Lamboratti luxury cars.  He’s been given a clean slate to design a brand new sports car and has a clear picture in his head: something cool, sleek and low to the ground. An aerodynamic, head-turning original, this will be Luca’s enduring classic.

He knows that the average height of the men most likely to buy his masterpiece is 5’ 9”.  But why limit the car’s appeal?  With a few simple adjustments, very tall men can enjoy Luca’s vision too. And so the roof is heightened, the wheel base extended, the leg room increased.

And what about short men? Why should they miss out on Luca’s genius?

A simple lowering of the dashboard so they can see the road ahead, a longer gear stick, and it’s perfect for the vertically challenged too.

And finally there it is, the sports car for everyone.

Only it’s no longer a sports car. It’s a monstrosity that most people would rather boil their own eyeballs than be seen in.  Let alone buy one.

By trying to please everyone, Luca has pleased no one.

When designing, it’s tempting to try and encompass everyone’s needs. But the reality is that good design is achieved by focusing on the needs of your core audience.

True’s expert UX consultants will be happy to help you define and understand your core audience, enabling great design that maximises your market potential.

Want to find out more? Email Damien.

Rather like explaining the rules of cricket to a baseball fan, some things are much easier to relate to if you use an everyday situation by way of example. So, here’s the first in a series of 3-minute guides to understanding digital marketing speak.

Attribution Modelling: what is it?

It’s Friday. 5.59pm. You head to your favourite drinking hole for a beer with a few friends from the office.

‘Pint of the usual please.’ But the ever-popular Old Codswallop is sold out. Danny from accounts suggests a pint of Golden Guzzle instead. Umming and ahhing, you remember that Team Leader Lisa was raving about it last week.  Meanwhile, Alice from IT says that Lusty Landlady might be worth a try.

Decisions, decisions. But then the barman points out that Golden Guzzle is on promotion. A thirst-busting 25p off. Decision made, you settle down with your pint and take a satisfying sup.

But what persuaded you to buy it?

This is a familiar challenge for Digital Marketing. The most commonly used model is ‘last click wins’. In this case, the barman would get all the credit for selling the pint of Golden Guzzle.

But although he offered the discount, would you have ordered the pint anyway?

If so, as the first person to recommend it, Danny should get the credit. True, but what about Lisa’s recommendation the week before?  Then, if you add into the mix the fact that Danny only knew about it because he’d seen an ad for it, the question of who really influenced your purchase becomes murkier than the dregs in the slop tray.

Attribution modelling allows you to build a much clearer picture. In our example, it would give the brewers of Golden Guzzle visibility over all the factors influencing your decision. Instead of just looking at the last click, you’d see all steps in the decision-making process.

There are many different attribution models. In our example, we might split out the credit equally by attributing 25% to the barman (he gets commission and acts as an affiliate), 25% to Danny (he’s probably a banner ad) 25% to Lisa (who shared with you on social media) and 25% to Alice (she’s shopping comparison).

The benefit of attribution modelling is that you don’t duplicate your sales figures which can cost extra money and give a distorted view. With a clearer picture of all contributing channels, you can see precisely where to invest extra budget to drive incremental sales!

To find out more about the potential of our attribution modelling for your business (over a drink perhaps?), just give Jack a call. He’ll be very happy to help.

Their top 7 sessions look something like this:

1. A different perspective on user requirements

In the travel industry, a lot of decision-making is based on overcoming users fears (e.g. pool dominated by screaming kids, neighbouring building sites, the nightclub next door…). Richard Caddick on how to dig for users fears, not just ‘requirements’.

2. Creative briefing tools

A refreshingly simple take on creative briefing from Leisa Reichelt:
Complete the gaps: [your brand] IS THE ONLY [category] THAT [user benefit]
3. Requirements gathering workshops

Fergus Roche’s session on running energetic client requirement gathering sessions included handling vocal and reticent people, managing large groups, sustaining energy, prioritising deliverables, and achieving consensus.

4. Website IA to Business IA

More from Leisa Reichelt on replacing site-maps and website user journeys with ‘business IA’ visualising larger business processes and user-experience maps including non-web touch-points.

5. 3 Ways to Make Your Wireframes More Useful

The more realistic the wireframe, the more insightful user-testing feedback will be. When you test without data, you test the usability. When you test with data, you test the whole user experience. Steve Cables’ practical suggestions include:

1. Show visual priority – shade or highlight what should stand out.
2. Use as much example data as you can.
3. Use image descriptions to find out if people see what they want to see in a given space.

6. Persuasive techniques in ecommerce

Jon Fisher and Tom Waterhouse on the need for user experience to focus on motivation and desire, not just ease and clarity. Their workshop explored the art of persuasive design.

7. Design Jam!

Mark Skinner, James Morris, Marianna Mota had us all redesigning UK train tickets using four different UX techniques:

• 4 Cs: break down the problem into components, characteristics, characters, and challenges.
• Dot voting: quick and prioritised consensus
• Vision statement: Create a core goal
• 6-8-5: Split a page into 6 or 8 and spend five minutes on different ideas based on the outcomes of the previous tasks

If you’d like to know more, or how our UX experts can help your business, please get in touch.

“I hate when people try to sell to me with a picture which looks like someone died in their footbath”

Those are the words of Linda Bellingham, who made a guest appearance for Isme at Haymarket Events ‘Older,Richer,Wiser’ Conference.

Selling to the over 50s is currently a hot topic in online marketing, particularly with the recent launch of high50.com, ‘the alternative to Saga’.

Pretty much half the population will be 50 or over by 2020, which begs the question: are two UK based websites catering for them really enough?

Marketers are finally realising that the over 50s – the generation who grew up with Punk, moon landings and The Exorcist – don’t consider themselves old in the same way that their parents did.

My dad, whose parents satisfied their wanderlust with a coach trip to Bournemouth every year, is planning to backpack around Ireland now he’s retired. He’s not alone in having an attitude more aligned with his children than with his elders.

It was great to hear that the Older, Richer, Wiser Conference view wholeheartedly supports the True approach to over 50s marketing:

• recognise they’re wiser, and au fait with marketing and airbrushes

• understand they may not be richer, but they do understand value

• ignore the fact that they’re older, exactly as they do

Generalising half the population as people who only want to know about pensions, Werther’s Originals and footbaths is not only patronizing – it’s poor business sense in a country where the ‘silver surfer’ is likely to be your largest customer base in a few years time.

True can help you genuinely engage with your target audience, however old they are. Want to know more? Talk to Jack.

On 26 May 2011, the new EU Regulations covering use of cookies on websites became UK law.

Businesses have been given one year to comply with the new law, which states that internet users should opt in to allow use of cookies on any website, rather than opt out if they wish to disallow them – the current legal position.

So what does that mean for you? How should you handle the changes on your site? How will it impact on your web analytics or advertising strategies?

That’s where Huw comes in…

Our very own cookie expert is here to help you prepare for the new law and make sure your website is ready to comply with its requirements next year.

By conducting a complete cookie audit of your site, updating your privacy policy and helping you explore alternative advertising and analytics solutions that don’t rely on cookies, you can be ahead of the game.

Want to know more? Get in touch.