A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

The act of creating images, diagrams, or animations to get a message across has been an effective way to communicate both abstract and concrete ideas since the dawn of man. Visualization is an indispensable tool for marketing communications professionals, especially when there are large amounts of data that the intended audience needs to absorb quickly.

This video, from Ben Klasky, does a great job of conveying the reach and impact of the non profit sector in a compelling way. (Non profits play a significant role in the economy - US non profits alone generate upwards of $1 trillion every year). It's aptly called Know Your Sector and really is worth the 3:40 it'll take you to watch it; especially if you work for a non profit, volunteer your time, or donate money to one, which, according to Ben's statistics, is many of us. The bibliography of the sources he used to create the piece can be found on his website.





Natalie Zensius is a marketing communications strategist with experience in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. Learn more about Natalie at http:www.linkedin.com/in/nzensius.

Save "Save The Words": A Quick Marketing Case Study

If you spend any time on the web and are connected to relatively erudite people (aren’t we all?), chances are you’ve been sent the link to Save The Words, a new website developed by marketing communications company Y&R's Singapore office. Save The Words is an advertising campaign created to stimulate sales of the latest version of the Oxford English Dictionary in Malaysia.

There’s a reason the site has gone viral–it’s creative and cute. Users can choose and “adopt” a word to keep it alive or just click on words and learn their meanings. When they find a word they like enough to adopt, they promise to use the word, “in conversation and correspondence, as frequently as possible.” There’s even an option to purchase a t-shirt with the chosen word on it.

Verbal branding consultant and word expert Christine Harkin enthuses that it “simply shimmers with brilliance” and “greets its audience with a protest-connoting march of signs which all cluster in the foreground and beg readers, “pick me!” While I agree with Ms. Harkin (disclosure: I have worked with Ms. Harkin previously and she’s an esteemed colleague) that this is a clever idea, I can’t get quite as worked up about it as she does because the execution, from a communications and web usability standpoint, diminishes my experience. Plus, I’m not fully on board with the strategy either.

Here’s what’s bothering me:

Design
The Flash-based design will be difficult for some computers and mobile users. Flash also makes deep-linking impossible and individual words unsharable – a tragic missed opportunity in today’s social world.

Usability
Designers love small font sizes and light grey type but it’s impossible to read, especially for older people who read and write a lot and love words (aka the site’s target audience). The fixed font size on the site is not only deadly for older eyes, it's a usability no-no for the disabled too. On the FAQ page, the link to the Facebook group doesn’t go to Facebook, but to the Oxford Press online store; creating possible confusion and frustration for users.

Navigation
The red arrows that indicate that the screen moves in all directions are so small that it’s hard to see them. Plus there’s no language to tell users that the screen can move in all directions. The main navigation is extremely small and hard to read. Also, two words–no search.

Content
It’s assumed the user will figure things out by clicking around which quickly becomes a tiresome exercise. Not answering users questions - such as what this site is about or specifically where they can buy a dictionary is frustrating. If users are searching for an interesting word to help them say a particular thing there’s no thesaurus function to help them do that. What’s also missing are some fun facts about word usage and the dictionary–the brand image and relationship with the Oxford English Dictionary isn't really being strengthened here.

Registering and Lack of Social Interaction
It’s clear from a marketing perspective why users are required to register but it can be a turnoff for some people, especially since there’s no apparent reason here why they should have to. If user information is being collected it should be integrated on the site to show people who've adopted words and it should be fun and social–read Facebook and Twitter–in terms of who has taken on the most words, etc. 

Strategy
“One of the problems we were facing,” says Creative Director Edward Ong, who reportedly came up with the idea in a bar with friends after work, “is that many people prefer to use the online dictionary. So we thought, why not get them to develop a love for words online and push them back to the physical dictionary?” Aside from a brief mention in the FAQ section the website does little to push users back to the physical dictionary or reward them for using one. I wonder if it’s actually doing the opposite by allowing them to fall into the web again.

Ong claims that there have been 3 million website mentions of this site and a 12 percent increase in sales of the dictionary since the campaign launched so the things that are irksome for me about this site may not be an issue for most people. I've certainly seen some interesting words get slung about on the internet this past week and anything that helps increase awareness of the richness of our language can only be a good thing.

Y&R, (formally Young and Rubicam), is an industry giant so I expect them to know and implement the best practices for marketing communications and web usability. I'd like to see them come up with some social media strategies to encourage use of the dictionary and/or thesaurus offline (Youtube anyone?). Hopefully they can continue to improve on the site; it could become a great resource for people and help bridge the gap between surfing the web and the tactile and delicious experience of leafing through a "real" dictionary.

Natalie Zensius is a marketing communications strategist with experience in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. Learn more about Natalie at http:www.linkedin.com/in/nzensius.

Guidelines For Using Photos As Web Content

Back when I started this blog, I made the conscious decision not to include images unless they were directly illustrative of the point I was trying to make. Flash forward a few months later and if I'm not writing a case study I’ve found myself starting to use images to ‘pretty up’ most, if not all, of my posts. Research by web usability guru Jakob Nielsen indicates that I should have stuck with my original plan.

Nielsen’s eyetracking studies document a dramatic gap in how users approach website (and blog) images. Here’s the major takeaways:

1. Some types of pictures are completely ignored by web users
This is typically the case for big feel-good images that are purely decorative.

2. Other types of pictures are treated as important content and scrutinized
Photos of products and real people (as opposed to stock photos of models) often fall into this category.

3. Visual bloat annoys users
Even with high-speed Internet connections and sub-second download times, users still prefer websites that focus on the information they want, rather than images and visual design, especially when they are using smartphones.

According to Nielsen (whose website is an exemplary model of web usability), pictures can make a positive difference to the user experience in some cases. In e-commerce for example, product photos help users understand products and differentiate between similar items. On corporate and personal websites and blogs users want to see the person or team behind the site, organization or company.

What it comes down to is that users pay attention to information-carrying images that show content that's relevant to the task at hand. They ignore purely decorative images that don't add real content to the page.

Aside from these practical tips there’s a larger lesson for communications professionals here. As marketers we sometimes get sidetracked and try to give our customers what we think they should want as opposed to what they really need. We usually have the best intentions–we want to delight our customers–but it can have the unintended consequence of negatively impacting their brand experience. Graphic design should always be used judiciously and only in service of the goal we're trying to accomplish, not the other way around.

I’ll admit it, I got seduced by the power of visual assets and graphic design. I was worried about what marketer Lauren Girardin calls the deadly “nothing but text” screen. Plus, social media guru Chris Brogan, in a great post about blogging best practices, says that "using pictures makes the posts pop". But Nielsen reminded me that while blogs are a unique form of website, they are websites nonetheless and normal website usability guidelines apply to them too. From here on in, I'll be following his blog usability guidelines to the letter.

What do you think? Do images enhance your user experience on this blog or would you rather do without them unless they are directly adding to the content value or brand experience?

Natalie Zensius is a marketing communications strategist with experience in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. Learn more about Natalie at http:www.linkedin.com/in/nzensius. 

The Importance of Research and Good Infographics

Image: Neeta Lind

I had some routine blood work done yesterday to test, amongst other things, my cholesterol levels and whether or not I had diabetes. My results pleased me as much as if I had scored perfectly on the SATs (which, physiologically speaking, I had.) It took me a while to figure out that I was as healthy as can be though, because the numbers didn't mean anything and the information my healthcare provider had on their website explaining what the tests were looking for was confusing and sparse. I ended up having to do some searching around on the web to decode it.

Literacy levels in this country are going down and they are inextricably tied to two key demographics: the health and wealth of our population. The 2003 National Adult Literacy Survey found that adults with the lowest literacy levels (a number that has increased since the last time the survey was conducted in 1992) are more likely than those at the higher levels to be poor and to have a physical, mental, or other health condition. Older adults (who typically have more health concerns–such as diabetes and high cholesterol–to deal with) are more likely than middle-aged or younger adults to demonstrate limited literacy skills: 40% of seniors aged 65 or older read at or below the 5th grade level. Yet most health-related materials are written at the 10th grade level.

If I, as a college educated and web savvy individual, have a hard time understanding what my test results mean, I worry about what some people with less education must make of theirs.

I give major points to my healthcare provider (Kaiser Permanente) for the speed in which I received my results and how easy it was to access them. I had blood drawn at 10:30am and by 3:35pm I'd received email notification that the results were available on my password-protected user page. Within 24 hours I also got an email from my doctor telling me how great the results were, asking me if I had any questions, and to keep up the good work. Talk about fantastic customer service. But what about the people who can't get theirs if they can't read, don't have a computer or are not technologically comfortable?

In addition to being aware of the literacy constraints that many people face it’s important for healthcare communicators to understand other aspects of their audience demographic. How do healthcare providers give out test results for folks in poor rural areas, for example?

Whether the delivery mechanism is in person, an online message, or a printout received by mail, it's commonly accepted that more than 60 percent of individuals are visual learners yet my test results were all text and numbers. Couple a lack of graphic design with words that are hard to understand for most people and it's no wonder some healthcare communications (in this case test results) don't make sense. A 2000 Harvard literature review of medical and public health research addressing literacy issues offers little in the way of recommendations to improve communications beyond the written word, yet these communications are often critical to helping patients understand and manage their ongoing health. Good visual cues and clever use of iconography can help all healthcare customers, regardless of their reading level.

In my test results I would have liked to see symbols that represent what each test is for and some sort of chart that shows the scores on it. People are by nature, typically competitive, even with themselves, and this would be a great way to show a person visually how they rank, normatively. Since these tests are done regularly, it could also be customized to track a person’s improvement (or not) over time, which could be a useful teaching tool for docs to use, regardless of how they communicate it.

It's great that I got an email from my doc, with an open invitation to ask questions. It turns out that I was able to find what I needed and didn't need help, but here's yet another instance where doing the research to understand your audience is important. A lot of people who have problems with literacy hide this fact from family members, co-workers and, most likely, their doctors. Plus, people can be busy or lazy, or both. How many people are going to take the time to follow up on these test scores to make sure they really understand them, and wouldn't it be more efficient for everyone if that information could be gotten easily from the initial communication?

Natalie Zensius is a marketing communications strategist with experience in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. Learn more about Natalie at http:www.linkedin.com/in/nzensius.