On a blustery November morning, nearly 400 MIMA members and guests convened at the Depot in downtown Minneapolis for the monthly presentation and networking event.

It was standing room only; the crowd buzzing with conversation beforehand, listening intently during the program (and laughing together at the speakers’ humorous comments) then asking thoughtful questions before departing. And if this kind of participation continues to increase, the nation’s largest regional Internet Marketing Association may need to start reserving larger venues – a la convention centers or sports arenas.

7:30 am comes pretty early for most peoples’ schedules. At that hour, what could possibly bring together so many marketers, innovators, entrepreneurs, creatives, new media types and others who are curious about latest developments in the interactive space where technology and business intersect?

In addition to the quality of the content, it might be the opportunity to share ideas and inspiration – over coffee and a tasty breakfast – with leading thinkers in our industry. If you have attended events before, you know. If you have not, make a point of attending a future event to see for yourself.

This month’s program, the Constant Challenge to Acquire and Convert, served up some classic marketing strategy with a heavy emphasis on contemporary interactive tactics. The information was presented by John Barton, Vice President of Creative Services of Sight Marketing and Tom Masterman, Associate Director, Earth Collaboratory Initiative for the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota.

Far from being a boring theoretical lecture or a dry technical discussion, John and Tom made their presentation equal parts education and entertainment. Effortlessly switching back and forth between the roles of straight man and comedian, it was like watching the Smothers Brothers* talk about what’s going on in the interactive world instead of current global geo-political affairs.

Indeed. Interspersing smart marketing ideas with smart aleck commentary made a fairly content-heavy presentation stream by effortlessly. And they wisely provided key take aways and practical “how to” ideas you can take back to the office and begin using right away. All in all, an excellent way to start the day.

Take away number one: Measure everything – don’t accept unfocused targets or unmeasurable social media.

Associated action item: Go to wefollow.com or twazzup.com and listen.

Take away number two: Be organized – coordinate tactics, separate measurement (drive traffic for each tactic to a different URL, use different key code, etc.) and plan for data-driven relationships.

Associated action item: List campaign elements and expected outcomes, then make sure you can isolate what is driving results for each.

Take away number three: Get personal – know the story for each individual … so you can write the next chapter.

Associated action item: Take your customer service manager out to lunch, and your sales manager out for drinks, and ask a lot of questions that will help you gain insights into your customers’ relationship with your products, services and brand.

For more details, please review the take away slide they provided.

* Cultural reference for the younger crowd: The Smothers Brothers were a popular comedy duo in the late 60s known for liberal politics and championing social causes. Look them up on YouTube. You’ll laugh at more than the turtleneck sweaters. And you might think about what is happening in today’s news.

On August 12, about 200 MIMA members and guests gathered after work at the Metropolitan Ballroom in Golden Valley to sip cocktails, snack on hors d’oeuvres and network. And a fine evening was had by all.

Our guest speaker for the evening was John Dames, Design Director at CoolFire Media who traveled up the Mississippi from St. Louis to share his experience as a designer who has “done it all.” From print design to motion graphics to commercials, and now, most recently, iPhone applications.

John’s philosophy is simple. “My goal is now and has always been to make stuff. Not talk about it, write about it or think on it. But find a way to get it done and execute.”

Sounds like a common sentiment from most of the designers I know. One of the first things he said by way of introduction to his presentation was that he wasn’t a public speaker. So the evening depended kind of heavily on samples from the CoolFire Media reel that he brought with him as examples.

With that in mind, here are some gold nuggets taken from an hour and a half of ramblings, tangents and free-association on the subject of designing across platforms. This was all good right-brain stuff, after all. You just had to really listen for it.

General observations
“When taking on a new design challenge, it’s okay not knowing everything about the tools you are using. What you don’t know means you innovate.”

“Less people, money, resources and time has forced the return of the holistic thinking role of a designer.”

“Talent can trump depth and infrastructure any day. With the right people you can accomplish great things with small teams.”

“Designing across platforms allows marketers to more effectively create the user experience they want their audience to have.”

“Designers are now taking a more defining role in developing the user experience.”

Strategies for success
1. Take a holistic approach to production. “Want to do everything. Be happy doing anything.”

2. Allow cross pollination of disciplines. “Don’t just execute ideas – feel empowered to have ideas and share them with others on the team.”

3. Encourage blurring of roles. “Who knows where design is going to take you. Listen to everyone.”

What is coming next culturally and business wise?
“More advertising and branding messages will be integrated into content.”

“The internet is becoming more codified, less of a content dumping ground.”

“Media is all independent of the medium it appears in.”

“Procedural culture is driving change – nothing stays the same.”

“Design will become even more relevant, to help facilitate effective communication.”

Conclusion
What gold nuggets did you leave with? Reply to this blog post with some of the highlights you found meaningful.

So where are you reading this blog post from? Your home in Minneapolis. Your office over the River in St. Paul? Or a coffee shop in Mexico?

You know they call it “the world wide web” for a reason. And as the infrastructure to support it expands around the globe – and as the technology to access it becomes more affordable and readily available – the Internet truly is facilitating communication across widely dispersed geo-political boundaries. So visitors to your website could be coming from anywhere on earth, really.

Lots of smart interactive marketing professionals recognize the Internet’s burgeoning capability to facilitate international transactions. Recently, 200+ members of the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (and guests) met at W Minneapolis for our July event, featuring a presentation by Joe Kutchera an expert in online marketing and building sales in Latin American markets and founder of dotGlobal, an international e-commerce and media consultancy.

Joe spoke to the group about concepts related to localization and internationalization, using Latin American markets as an example. Here are select highlights from his full presentation.

Localization trends
Joe gave us some examples of how geographic boundaries can affect shopping behavior.

Price. According to Joe, who lives in New York City, many people in Manhattan cross the Hudson River to save on groceries and gas, because prices are less expensive and taxes are lower in New Jersey. Or compare the prices for the same products available on Dell’s U.S and Mexican online stores (both prices given in USD).
• Inspiron 13” – Dell.com: $499; Dell.com.mx: $665
• Studio Slim Desktop – Dell.com: $399; Dell.com.mx: $702
• Dell V305 Printer – Dell.com: $99; Dell.com.mx: $132
(Sources: Dell.com and Dell.com.mx, July 2009)

Availability. Joe shared several anecdotes about Latin American friends who frequently seek out U.S. sources to buy products because they often have greater selection and better quality. For a local example, who among us as creative and enterprising MIMA members have not crossed the St. Croix River on a Sunday afternoon at least once to replenish the liquor cabinet after a rollicking party the night before, because of Minnesota blue laws prohibiting alcohol sales on Sunday?

Internationalization trends
Joe provided a variety of figures verifying what we already know: the Internet is an increasingly international space. A look at the top 50 ostensibly U.S. websites shows that many are getting more traffic from abroad than from U.S. visitors. The New York Times web edition gets 42% of its readers from abroad, Twitter 51%, YouTube 81% and Facebook 82%.

Where could these visitors be browsing your website from? According to Internet World Stats, the top five most used languages on the Internet are: English (430.8 million), Mandarin (276.2 million), Spanish (124.7 million), Japanese (94.0 million) and French (68.2 million).

Indeed. For those of you who think visually — or for you verbal people like me who need context to put large numbers into perspective — try this on. The Minneapolis Star Tribune print edition reported two days after Joe’s presentation that China now has more people who are online than the entire population of the United States.

Opportunities for marketers
How are Latin Americans and Spanish-speaking people in the United States finding your website? By typing Spanish terms into their favorite search engines. Joe suggests making sure your SEO strategies include optimizing your site for Spanish (and other important international languages).

Look at your media plan. Joe said to think about your audience’s international language needs or professional interests horizontally across the vertical media channels in your strategy.

Target your messaging. Joe said there are a lot of ways to deliver messages to international audiences.
• By IP address or geographic region
• Re-target (follow up)
• Behavioral/linguistic
• Contextual (by subject)
• Profession/company/social network
• Country

Explore emerging g-commerce best practices. Joe said there is tremendous opportunity for marketers in the United States who make it easier for customers from around the world to buy their products.
• Give your visitors a choice of geographic denominations to transact in and make your offers available in multiple denominations.
• Give your visitors a choice of geographic locations to pick up products they order. If you do not have a physical presence in a foreign market where consumers are looking for your product or service, partner with a business there who can serve as a distributor for you.

Why would 280 ordinarily sensible internet marketing professionals get up at the crack of dawn and convene at the Mill City Museum? Sure, the camaraderie was great. And the breakfast wasn’t bad either. But those are only two reasons our MIMA monthly events have grown to be so popular.

The real attraction, as always, was the content – a presentation on user experience given by Nick Finck, co-founder of Seattle-based Blue Flavor, a web design company that focuses on creating great user experiences.

So what makes a great user experience? And how can you test your website? Nick described seven fundamental building blocks, and provided valuable insights about them, that you can put to use today.

Useable. This should be a top priority for page-driven design. Very simply, make sure functionality works effectively for all platforms and browsers.

Findable. Lots of developers work really hard to make search functionality as robust as possible. However information architecture and navigation design is equally important. Or even more so. Remember: if you can’t find something, it might as well not exist on your site.

Credible. Give website users an emotional reason to believe in you, as well as a rational one. A clean, professional visual design that provides clear, simple content can go a long ways toward creating a sense of trust.

Accessible. This is not just about avoiding unnecessary java script or burying content in Flash modules. Give users the option to explore your site content without advanced functionality. This includes making sure your site is accessible by people with disabilities.

(The Web Accessibility Initiative is a global volunteer organization dedicated to sharing strategies, guidelines and resources to help make the web accessible to all.)

And there is a strong business case for paying attention to accessibility. Not only can poor website accessibility lead to expensive, protracted litigation, it can lead to lost revenue opportunities when users are denied access to your site.

Desirable. It is important to think about holistic user experience. Do you really know what your users desire? Do focus groups. Then make functionality easier for users and create positive (not painful) emotional experiences for them.

Useful. This is another big issue in user experience. Lots of technologies exist that allow designers to develop cool effects, but make sure they serve a purpose greater than just serving up some eye candy. That means no gratuitous animation or delays to load graphics.

Put another way: don’t make users endure your site and don’t go overboard with the gimmicks. Make your site fast to load and make it easy for users to find the content they are looking for. Web users are trying to find information and solve problems, so they are not looking for a CD-ROM experience with your site.

Bottom line: Nick wonders how many dollars are lost in missed sales opportunities and how many customers are lost because excessive features and functionality get in the way. Not to mention the dollars wasted on developing them.

Valuable. Focus on providing features that make your site easy to use. Focus on developing content and processes that allow users to find the information they need or complete a transaction in as few steps as possible. Don’t treat users as a source of qualified leads to bombard with marketing messages and touch points. Limit the level of commitment you expect users to give to you and let them choose how deep a relationship they would like to have with you.

Three other gold nuggets Nick shared.

1) We need to think, “device agnostic.” We are no longer designing just for the desktop. With new technologies and new applications – and many more advancements on the horizon, we need to serve up information and experiences based on the context of the device/application the user is using and what they are trying to accomplish by using it.

2) We need to fail more. Because we are not pushing ourselves hard enough. And critical feedback is important too. The more we vet usability and experience, the better it gets. Always remember: “Failure is not falling down. Failure is not getting back up.”

3) We need to come together on behalf of our users. Information architects, interaction designers, visual designers, usability experts, accessibility specialists, content developers and marketing professionals would be wise to keep our audience in mind at all times. It’s not about us – it’s about the people who visit our websites.

The key take away. The one most important thing Nick wants you to remember:

By creating good experiences for our website users, regardless of what they are doing or how they do it, we can successfully accomplish our business goals. And that’s what we all get paid for.

Chances are you have a number of different inboxes, all competing for your attention. Professional and personal e-mail accounts. Voicemail and instant messaging at the office, your mobile device and at home. And now there’s all the social media inboxes – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Yammer, YouTube, Flickr – the list goes on and on.

Talk about your inbox insanity.

While many internet marketing professionals thrive on exploring ways to use these tools to generate and share content, we are a clear minority. Indeed, a vast majority of our customers and prospective customers are finding the proliferation of inboxes overwhelming. And as a result, 1:1 social media networks are beginning to fragment in the same way traditional media did before.

These are all insights Jeffrey Rohrs, Vice President of Marketing for ExactTarget, shared with about 150 MIMA members and guests at our February workshop. Speaking to us on a snowy morning at the Depot in downtown Minneapolis he also shared these observations on the current state of email marketing, some tips for successful practice and a vision for the future.

Observation one – Marketers are not in control. Consumers now scan and delete messages that do not appear relevant to them to manage their busy inboxes. Plus, they appreciate the greater control over the source of messaging they receive offered by social media inboxes. So email marketing messages must become more personal and less promotional to be opened, read and acted upon.

Observation two – Marketing communications increasingly exist by invitation. This is especially true for Millennials.

Observation three – Invitations are easily revoked. Remember the recent Burger King “angry Whopper®” offer for a free burger to anyone who got rid of ten Facebook friends? Demand was so high, they had to shut down the application.

Observations one, two and three demonstrate that permission and relevance matter. Fail to heed this simple rule and risk being deleted from the inbox or dropped by the consumer.

Tips for implementing a successful email marketing program
• Create conversations, deliver meaningful offers and don’t push for the sale
• Give consumers the information THEY want and the respect THEY deserve
• Don’t “pollute” the inbox with irrelevant communications
• Position your communications as customer service opportunities
• Create “subscribers” who opt-in and look forward to your communications

Based on these observations and tips, Rohrs said to be effective email marketing programs must be built on smart use of market data. Shockingly, he cited research from the CMO Council 2008 that reveals that few of us are prepared to succeed.

• Only 6% of CMOs surveyed said they have excellent knowledge of their customers.
• More than 50% of CMOs surveyed said they had little or no knowledge of their customers’ demographic, behavioral, psychographic or transactional data.

Clearly, these numbers need to change. Rohrs suggests marketers strive to transform from thinking like siloed businesses to thinking like publishers. Based on this concept, he and his firm, ExactTarget, believe that the future of email marketing will belong to those who take an agnostic approach where subscribers rule.

Key take aways
• Serve individuals
• Honor their unique preferences regarding communication, content, frequency and channel
• Deliver timely, relevant content that improves their lives (always send value)

When I first saw this month’s MIMA event was about email marketing I figured I could skip it. Mass emails and spamming are not my gig. Yup, that’s my first thought when I think email marketing – SPAM!

But yesterday as the MIMA event got underway I got curious. What does everybody else think of first when they hear email marketing? Do they have the same attitude as me? Why do I ignore email marketing when most other aspects of internet marketing really intrigue me? I’ve done a limited amount of email marketing in my past and know there is much more to it than spam blasting to a massive list of unsuspecting recipients. But for some reason email marketing has always been an easy topic for me to ignore in practice and study. I just have not been interested.

To quench my thirst for answers before my interest once again waned on the subject, I fired up the MIMA Live feed of the event (great feature by the way) along with Twitter and Twitter Search. I asked my fellow tweeters What do you think of first when you think of “Email Marketing”? The people I hang with on Twitter includes a good share of marketing type peeps so keep that in mind when reading their responses. Not all responses came from the marketing world though. Here are the replies I received….

AaronWeiche ROI

GraemeThickins that’s easy… spam

justrobyn Ad/specials, and exposure campaigns to new or existing cust’s via email.

brichterv i think email marketing is great but somehow it gets misrepresented as spam

_Dave_E Spam. Irksome, at best.

leeodden Email marketing is still one of the best return on investment marketing tactics and ties in perfectly with social media marketing

DazzlinDonna The first thing I think of when I think of Email Marketing is Companies leverage existing client base to sell products to them in the future. Easier to sell to existing clients than to attain new ones.

martinbowling First thing I think of “spam” hehe

TwisterMc Are effective campaigns about the words or graphics?

RuudHein spam. carpet bombing. blast marketing. gimmicky. sell vs. help.

martinbowling We use email marketing but only as a communication devise we try not to do “pitchy” emails

RuudHein no, haven’t used. When I will it will be newsletter/list based; content w. sales

mjkeliher When I think “e-mail marketing,” I think “opt-out.” As in, you better give me an easy way to opt out and a load of reasons not to

GraemeThickins don’t use it personally..I’m an independent consultant who gets business by personal referral..but some of my clients (tech startups) use it

josephrueter Conversation is the preferred stance in most anything. Any medium executed in a way that helps conversation is a GO!

bigboxcar First thing I think: Difficult. It’s hard to accomplish a dynamite email marketing campaign. Especially for publishers. 2nd thing: Cheap.

Via Facebook I also heard from John Bonfield who said ‘I do EMM, so I may not be representative … anyway, here ya go: “Designed for a Preview Pane”‘

Now, after listening to Jeffrey K. Rohrs, VP of Marketing for ExactTarget give his presentation to MIMA members and reading through the tweets I received, my gut reaction to email marketing has gained some depth, intrigue, and appreciation. The thoughts of spam still linger when I think of email marketing, but they are not as strong. I’ve come out this with these bullet points to remember…

• Precision Marketing & Customization – use data & behavioral info to message when it is of greatest relevance to them.
• Email Marketing has a great ROI
• Get Creative in building your lists and monetizing them
• The pool of folks with email is much larger than that of social media, don’t lose sight of that
• People have the control, treat them well
• Learn and know your customers

Thanks to Jeffrey K. Rohrs for the great presentation and to all of those that tweeted in reply! You can follow Jeffrey Rohrs on Twitter. If you want to follow any of the people above on Twitter they are of quality tweetitude! If you want to follow me on Twitter you can catch me at @dohman. You can also find the archived video feed of the presentation at MIMA’s UstreamTv channel. And last, if you would like to share your first thoughts of email marketing, or help clue me in on something more, I would love to read them, leave a reply!

Our January event was a panel discussion attended by nearly 200 interactive marketing professionals. While we all appreciate learning from the national experts, such as November’s speaker, Ginny Redish author of Letting Go of the Words – Writing Web Content that Works, these panel discussions are equally worthwhile to attend.

That’s because MIMA members have a ton of creativity, knowledge, experience – and personality – and the panel format is an excellent forum for us to share our expertise with one another. It’s one of the things that makes MIMA membership great.

Actionable take aways recommended by the panel follow.  Like someone said: “If you’ve got clients, customers and competitors who A) know how to type and B) have Internet connections, seriously, don’t miss this discussion.”

• Set up a Google Alert for your company’s name as well as your own name
• Reach out to the people who are talking about you to help shape the message

Tammy Lee Stanoch, VP Corporate Communications for NWA

• Don’t overlook Twitter when listening for what people are saying about you
• Look for profile sites that are aggregating information about your company – sometimes the information can be incorrect and you can correct it
• Register your name on .org, .net, .biz, .tv and other domain extensions besides .com

Lela Phommasouvahn, Senior Consultant, Search Marketing for FindLaw, a Thomson Reuters Business

• Check out spy.apspot.com
• Before engaging customers in social media spaces, ask yourself what kind of relationship do you want
• Remember that you do not have control of your brand in social media – you won’t influence anyone until you build their trust

Steve Bendt, Social Technology Activist for Best Buy, Inc.

Moderator Greg Swan, Digital Strategy Manager at Weber Shandwick, also made the case for why digital reputation management should be a priority for any business by sharing the following quote from Warren Buffett.

“If you lose money for the firm by bad decisions, I will be understanding. If you lose reputation for the firm, I will be ruthless.”

Is this a corollary to the ageless axiom: “reputations take years to create but can be undone in seconds”? In today’s world of mobile internet, social media and user generated content, this is a truth that is wise to be mindful of.

For more information visit http://delicious.com/digitalreputationmanagement.

“Everything is based on the Burden of Interactivity,” Juan Antonio stated during the August, 13th MIMA event on video marketing.  As interactive marketers, this is where the rubber meets the road.  New and creative ways to attract and ultimately engage users with our online brand(s) is what we all strive to achieve and are held responsible for.  Video marketing is one force pushing that boundary of interactivity as video viewing and sharing continues to become increasingly popular.  This surge of online viewership is evident in the statistics discussed during the event.  Ciceron CEO and MIMA presenter Andrew Eklund states that nearly 33.7 percent of males age 18-24 view a video at least once per day.  Even more impressive is nearly 75 percent of people receive links to videos.  Even large brands such as Minnesota based 3M are looking for new and creative ways to take advantage of this surge.  For this they turn to video marketing creative firms such as Jake Nyberg’s Threevolts, who was responsible for 3M’s Protect Your Walls campaign, a viral spoof on NBC’s The More You Know campaign.   

As if video marketing isn’t cutting edge enough, video pioneers such as Christina Cordova are taking it one step further.  She is working on an interactive product placement video that would allow users to interact with the video and actually click on the product.  Chuck Olsen, a video journalist and MIMA presenter, is learning to embrace new video technologies that allow him to break news simply using his laptop web camera.  Video bloggers and journalists are learning to take advantage of new technologies such as Quik.  Quik is a piece of software that integrates into certain Nokia phones transforming your mobile phone into a streaming mobile phone camcorder.

As we all can appreciate, it is difficult to forecast/monetize the results of a particular viral video campaign. However, firms’ ROI expectations are still present.  With the surge of video creation, viewing and sharing the “Burden of Interactivity” already felt by interactive marketers is rapidly shifting to video marketers.  Firms such as 3M are becoming more understanding of the potential power of video marketing, but still strive to track and expect to achieve results.  Video marketers such as Juan, Jake and Christina are facing the “Burden of Interactivity” head-on, and their solutions are changing the face of marketing as we know it.

About ten years ago, one of the biggest issues facing interactive marketers was the proliferation of information out there. The statistic at the time was: over a million web pages were being added to the internet every day.

Isn’t that quaint?

If you ever feel like you’re being blasted by a fire hose of information, you’re not alone. On a beautiful July evening, about 200 Internet marketing professionals gathered at the International Design Center to listen to a panel of MIMA members share strategies and insights for filtering through the onslaught of RSS, e-mail newsletters, Google Alerts, juicy blogs, sweet tweets and other sources to find truly useful information, fast.

Talk about a fire hose of information. Here are a few “gulps” from my notes, to help slack your thirst for information about managing information.

• When evaluating information, look for accuracy, authority, objectivity, currency, coverage and relevance. (Alisa Coddington, Knowledge Specialist, Carmichael Lynch)
• Focus on what is important: 90% of information is garbage. (Garrick van Buren, President, Working Pathways, Inc.)
• If it is important, the information will find you. (van Buren)
• Replace your professional filter with a social filter to find valuable information faster. (van Buren)
• Use Google Desktop to aid your personal search and so you don’t have to remember where you file everything. (Greg Swan, Social Media Strategist, Weber Shandwick)
• Use RSS for reading and monitoring. (Michael Keliher, Public Relations Practice Manager, Provident Partners)
• To help simplify choices about what you pay attention to, focus on value and think about the “why.” (Keliher)
• Call the reference desk at your local library or government agencies when you’re looking for data. (Coddington)

A recurring theme was the value of using your communities and Twitter to know what to pay attention to. If the information is important enough, people will be tweeting about it and asking their communities questions about it. As Swan said: “Sharing and participation are the currency of the knowledge economy.”

The idea has been circulating in the advertising/marketing world for decades. Develop a profile of your customer – or persona – to help inform your creative decision-making. And I’m a big advocate of using personas, having gotten to know Jill (a busy mom) and Barry (a successful executive) extremely well when writing for Best Buy’s customer-centricity initiative a few years ago.

Trouble is: a lot of people in our business aren’t using personas to their full potential. Which is why it was a real pleasure to listen to our June speaker, Tamara Adlin, founder and president of adlin, inc., and co-author of The Persona Lifecycle: Keeping People in Mind Throughout Product Design (with John Pruitt, Microsoft).

On a warm evening at the Calhoun Beach Club, Tamara got right to the Achilles heel of most corporate organizations and the agencies who serve them. The market data we spend so much time and money to collect and analyze always seems to wind up underutilized, misunderstood, ignored and, ultimately, forgotten. There’s too big a gap between the data and the design.

She then explained how personas can help translate the data we have into a language we all speak and help us focus our efforts on the people who are important. Our customers.

To help illustrate the need for personas in the interactive marketing space, Tamara pointed out several common design problems that personas can help marketers and creative types avoid.

Barnacle based design
Bolting sitelets onto a website when new features or functionality are needed instead of modifying your actual website.

Corporate underpants
Website organization that reflects your corporate organization instead of your customers’ needs. Often has a tab for each cost center paying for the project.

“It has to be on the home page”
Putting everything onto your home page, making it cluttered and difficult to navigate. Often tries to bring the pet projects of the CEO and other stakeholders to the front.

Multiple personality disorder
Related to corporate underpants. When different cost centers or product lines develop sections of your site which leads to a bumpy end-to-end experience for site visitors.

“We need to use technology”
Happens when you try to adopt new technical capabilities faster than your customers are willing, interested or able to.

Focusing on a persona helps your site avoid these common missteps if it is developed by multiple teams with different roles and responsibilities. And here’s the kicker: even if the persona isn’t based on hard data, if it is defined with rigor and precision, all involved will be aligned and the end result will be more consistent. And therefore, more effective.

Tamara wrapped up her presentation by sharing ways you can use personas right now.
• Develop ad hoc personas
• Look for the typical site design issues
• Evaluate your site (or your competitors’ site) from the point of view of various personas
• Brainstorm features or messages based on personas
• Experiment with experience design

One final piece of advice from Tamara. Outlaw the term “user” when talking about the people who visit your website. It’s incredibly unspecific. Because like Tamara says: “There’s only one other industry that call its customers ‘users’ – and we don’t want to behave like it.”

For more of Tamara’s great insights on using personas, download the podcast of her presentation. In addition to her book, she recommends another authoritative publication on personas, The Inmates Are Running the Asylum by Alan Coope