Integrated Branding Blog | Movéo

Does your browser smile?

Unlike the early days of web development there are now standards practiced when building websites. The closer a web browser adheres to these standards the easier it is to develop, update and maintain a website. Browsers such as Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome have all made great strides in becoming standards compliant. Microsoft's browser Internet Explorer (IE), unfortunately, has had a pretty bad track record when it comes to this topic. Ask any web developer which browser has given them the most headaches over the past several years and I bet the majority, if not all, answer IE version 6 (IE6) - released back in 2001.

Why anyone in today's online world would still insist on using a web browser over 7 years old is beyond me. Let's add a little perspective here. The average American will upgrade their vehicle every 5 to 8 years, so by this account if you are using IE6 you might have owned two cars since it's inception. Pretty sad when you consider the cost to upgrade a browser is literally nothing compared to the amount you would spend on a new car.

What I am driving at here (no pun intended) is that some people do not take their online experience as seriously as they should. The web has changed dramatically in just the past two years, let alone the past seven. Would you expect your seven year old car to run as reliable or efficient as a new one? No, of course not. Then why would one expect a cutting-edge "Web 2.0" website (more on this topic later) to work in an outdated, non-standards compliant browser?

You can check if your browser is standards compliant by taking the Acid2 test (www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html) developed by the Web Standards Project (WaSP) back in 2005. If the version of your browser doesn't smile at this test then it is imperative you either upgrade to a version that can, or change your browser altogether. The bad news for Microsoft is that their first release of IE to pass this test is version 8, which is still in beta! Users that insist on using IE should, at the very least, upgrade to version 7 until 8 becomes available.

Too much effort has been exhausted developing sites that will still work in non-compliant browsers. If we continue catering to the few percent of users who are too lazy or ignorant to upgrade to the latest strain of standard compliant browsers then we will be hindering the growth of the web. Websites can do a lot of cool and powerful things these days, so let's focus our resources on the future and stop wasting time and money trying to make that old, gas-guzzling SUV run as smooth and efficient as a brand-new hybrid.

Jeff Jonjevic, Web Developer

Google Chrome – Why is Google in the Browser Business

With MSN still loosing search market share, and the failed Yahoo bid, you would think that Google would have written them off as competition and figured the software giant would, well…          …stick to software. It seems like Google has other plans than to quietly back away from possible confrontation with Microsoft. The new Google open source browser has been released as a beta: Google Chrome.

I run Chrome on my PC that I use to handle the large spreadsheets I work with. My experience so far has been a generally positive one. It seems to run smoothly, crashing less than Firefox, my up-till-now default browser. I have to admit, I haven’t used Internet Explorer for years. The only problem I have had with Chrome so far is the time it takes with certain graphics, like the graphs in AdWords reports. I would have thought Google would have made sure that Chrome ran all its interfaces smoothly, but I guess they don’t plan to worry about a feature that isn’t used, since the graph can only be saved through a screen shot.

From everything I have taken in on the Tweetisphere it looks like this is Google’s way of shaking up the browser market, by solving several problems that have led to tons of crashes. But its just a beta, and with Google’s never ending betas it will be interesting to see when or if Chrome gets polished up and out of the beta phase.

Search Query Data helps B2B Connect Online

Where does the search for the right keywords begin when building your online presence? Good Brand Strategy Research begins the process, laying the foundation that will hold everything together. As a Search engine specialist my focus is how to apply the concepts and differentiation built into their Branding into their Interactive and Media presence. But relying on what customers were willing to say in research should only be a starting point for your businesses online location in cyberspace.

So how do we find what words your customers are searching for? There are two schools of thought, which I have seen evangelized by many in the SEM industry.

The first is to keep everything small and easy to manage. This tactic usually involves taking keywords that are already being used on the site, adding in what the automated systems generate in Google, and maybe do the same in Yahoo! Search Marketing if that platform is being used.

The second theory is to actually do some work and find the historical data that will give insight into not only the keywords most searched for but also what other industries are competing for the same general keywords. Movéo employs historical data based on the list of keywords provided by previous web copy, brand strategy research, Executives and search query historical data. The landscape of historical data is ever changing, as for over a year and a half marketers still used the Overture database, even though it had stopped updating data. By actively engaging in the communities and current events of the search marketing industry we employ a wide variety of search query database tools that we aggregate and sort to reach across 13 tools and databases.

By employing historical search query data for B2B marketing search marketers can be sure that terms you should be seen for, that people have searched for in the past, you are seen for. As well, it is just as important that those searchers seeking other industries or levels of the supply chain do not even see your ad.

VisualRank Image Search introduced by Google in Beijing

Ask any Search Engine Optimization professional and they will tell you that image search is all about the tags. Unfortunately for searchers, this has led to poor quality of  search results. Flickr, the photo social network of Yahoo! Uses tags to group photos into relevant bunches. Microsoft Live.com and Google also have image search engines based off of these same tags. For example, type “classic cobra” into any of the three engines and your results will be a mix of cars, snakes, and toys. No amount of long tail search refinement seems to ever bring the results to real pertinence.

PageRank, Google’s signature search technology, is joined by VisualRank. Google announced the new image-recognition algorithm blend at the International World Wide Web Conference in Beijing. Google is looking to stay ahead of start-ups specializing in image search with VisualRank, believing the new search technology is a real breakthrough.

So what does this mean for Google’s bottom line? As Google refines it’s image search be on the look out for integration of ads similar to current Google searches, with easy access for merchants using Google checkout, and other profitable cross-promotions.

What should businesses be doing now? Do the tags still matter?
Take a step back and approach this change with the end user in mind. Are the images you are using representative of your business?  If they aren’t, or if they are just filler, replace them to images that better represent your business and brand. Double check your tags while your at it, although Google may be able to search your images, they don’t drive all the searches.

Location. Location. Location.

Almost any business owner you speak with will tell you the key to success is location. However, in the age of the information superhighway what exactly does this mean? Are they referring to their physical location, how it meets the demands of customers, suppliers, transportation, utility access, traffic count, ease of entry… the list of the Economic Geographic factors can be extensive, or are they referring to where prospects become customers?  Is location still a driving force for business? Not only is location crucial to the success of any business, so is location and location.

Location 1: Physical location

Where your business is located physically and how to optimize your location is analyzed using the economic and geographic metrics I listed above. Many factors go into the decision of which location best serves your business, whether your focus is shipping logistics or consumer access. It may be necessary for a retail outlet to be on a busy easy to access corner, just as it is important for a manufacturer to be near suppliers and transportation infrastructure.

Location 2: Virtual location

Where your business is located virtually is quickly gaining importance in the battle to draw in new customers, and keep current ones. Every business’ virtual location begins with an address on the world wide web. However, just as with physical locations, virtual locations are not just your website. Other factors included in virtual location are linkbacks, trackbacks, listing sites, Google maps, social networks (eg. Linkedin & Meetup), forums, e-zines, and anything else that is logged by the search engines (eg. Twitter, a mass IM social application).

Location 3: Brand location

Where your business is located in the mind of your customer is what brings everything together, turning prospects into clients. Brand strategy needs to integrated and implemented across the first two locations and everything your business is involved in to maximize effectiveness and allow your business to communicate what customer it best serves, and what hill you have planted your flag on.

Location is as important as ever for business. Whether brand, virtual or physical, your location choices will drive your business. Every step must be based in tested research to make sure you are in the best position to maximize your business’ opportunities.

Browser Experience Design

User experience design, AKA UX design is hot topic in web design and rightly so, but I want to take moment to blog a bit about an unsung area that is often overlooked and misunderstood yet critical to UX design--browser experience design. 

For years web developers and web producers have been including browser support requirements in their scope documents and programmers have been pulling their hair out trying to replicate the same experience across all browsers. Many in the web development community, Movéo included, believe in and push for increased compliance with web standards, but unfortunately not all browsers comply with or support these standards. So, try as we might to comply with web standards, developers have to "hack" their code to support multiple browsers. What's most troubling is the fact that MS Internet Explorer, the most widely used browser, is the least compliant. 

So what do we do? The answer, browser experience design. Instead of hacking code in an attempt to deliver the same experience across all browsers, web developers should seek to build a stable and accessible foundation that ensures accessibility across most, if not all, browsers and then increase the richness of the user experience as the browser's compliance to standards increases. Think of it like you might television, you can watch the super bowl on a B&W TV but the experience on a hi-def TV is just way better.

Want to see how your browser stacks up? Take the Acid 2 test below:

First, click here to view a rendering of what a standards compliant browser should output.

Now, click here to test your browser's compliance with standards.

View Acid 2 test screen grabs of how most browsers stack up. Note I.e. 6 and 7. Ugh!

The good news for MS Internet Explorer users and all the programmers who have to "hack" their compliant code for it to "work" on Internet Explorer is that version 8, "scheduled" to release sometime during the first half of 2008, promises to be standards compliant. The bad news, most end-users won't upgrade right away as they are not aware of how bad their browser is and businesses are typically slow to rollout upgrades . But who knows I could be wrong. Here's hoping!