Creative Agency Secrets

They wrote a book, called Web Design for ROI.

Key learning from this session: Judgements made are very quickly online. Improved design can make users take more actions that you want them to do. Small % improvements can lead to significant ££$$ revenue growth.

Reasons for writing it – frustration… the business case and the design guidelines.

Clients don’t understand the impact design can have on their
business metrics led by a good user experience and a better web
interface.
Clients mostly think they want a Ferrari website… but it frequently
doesn’t lead with a clear business objectives. Usually they need
functional, utilitarian but good looking. What they have is a long way
from either of these!

• 43% of retail (offline) sales are influenced by knowledge gained by
  online research. 83% of businesses use the internet to research and
  find potential vendors. [true – I did the database research in this
  way].
• Judgements made are very quickly made online. Reactions to a new
  web page are made from 1/20th of a second…. likelihood of interaction
  is part of the reaction to these first snap impressions.

(more…)

Just arrived.. and feeling very buoyed as I managed to park the hire car just beside the Hilton which is 200m from the Convention Centre entrance. How about that for a good start! And weekend parking on meters is free in Austin!

Hoping to meet up with a few Twitter folks… while I was driving over last night there was a huge informal Twitter meet-up.

In case you haven’t been following my twitter stream I am in USA this week for South by Southwest SXSW Interactive

Hey am planning my SXSW days…. boy are they risking being very crowded!

I plan on live blogging the ones I attend and adding other stuff as it happens and I get a chance and so here ‘s a probable list of what you’ll be getting on the menu over the next four days… all times are local to Austin TX.

So far this is what I have listed (if I get to them all it’ll be a miracle)

Saturday

08.00 SXSW Social Breakfast, with Ewan Spence

10.00 Book reading: Web Design for ROI

11.30 The Weird Turn Pro: Crowdsourcing For Creatives

14.00 Keynote opening remarks with Henry Jenkins and Steven Johnson

15.30 The Art of Speed: Conversation with Monster Makers - Tim Ferriss

17.00 A General Theory of Relativity

Sunday

10.00 Online Advertising for Newbies

11.30 Core conversation: Blog on Company time without getting Dooced

14.00 Stories Games and your Brand

21.00 Threadless and Moo party!!!

Monday

10.00 The art of self-branding

11.30 Self Replicating Awesomeness: The Marketing of No Marketing

14.00 Judo Moves for Defending Your Reputation Online

15.00 Book Reading: Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide

15.30 SXSW Open Format

17.00 Sponsored Panel: The Web Agency: There Will Be Blood