E-dreamz Company Blog

By the end of the day every Google user will see a light purple background behind the paid search results instead of the previous light yellow. The first purple backgrounds became visible to a select group back in May. It took a few months but today marks the end of light yellow and the beginning of light purple for all paid search results for the foreseeable future.

Why the sudden change after three successful years of yellow? Google’s official response is that light purple was chosen purely for aesthetics to update the look and feel of their current search results page. Google is known to be private at best so the color rumor mill has been working overtime since the Monday statement.

Eight years ago the first AdWords advertisements appeared with a light green background. Green seemed an obvious choice considering it is most associated with money. Green has also been proven to improve reading ability and is the color of nature, tranquility and health. The Google brand and lifestyle has always been that of social responsibility, employee wellness and moderation, so green seemed to be a perfect fit.

Five years later the paid search background changed to a light yellow. Yellow seemed to be based on economics for Google’s highest revenue generating product. Yellow is the most visible color in our spectrum and widely used by advertisers and sign makers to grab the attention of passing drivers and potential customers.

By the end of the day the third sponsored search color change will have been fully implemented. Like the first two colors; purple has economic implications as it represents wealth, power and royalty. Seems like a good strategy, get searches in the mindset of wealth and status while they browse ads targeted at returning an investment. Unlike the previous colors, purple has deeper meanings than greenbacks or canaries.

Purple is the primary color of the NBA Champion team, the LA Lakers. Google might not be as nerdy as we thought, using their search results to represent their native California team. They might be avid literature fans referencing the classic novel, The Color Purple, by Alice Walker.

Politically, a completely bi-partisan state is called a Purple State, equal combinations of Red (Republican) and Blue (Democrat) create the perfectly bi-partisan purple. Is Google expressing their frustrations of a split bi-partisan government? Or are they saying political cooperation is the answer to our countries’ issues.

Another theory is that absolutely no thought goes into color choice at all and they are just cycling their logo colors of blue, red, yellow and green. The only thing we know for certain is that the color choice is here to stay. So, regardless of deeper implications we better get used to the change since that is what we’ll see in search results for the next few years.

So you have a great looking website that makes everyone OOH and AHH the second they see it. It received rave reviews from your CEO, Board of Directors, and even the janitor. Though for some the website just does not convert. Often times in website development the vision or purpose of what the website was built for is lost. Basically your brand new Ferrari drives like a Yugo. Here are five quick tips on how you can increase conversion on your website:

1.     Revise your call to action - Do you have a call to action? Where is it on the page?  What color is it? Does it stand out? Is it large enough? A new or even returning customer might get easily lost on your website. Direct them where to go. Give them the action(s) you want to perform in an easy and obvious way. 

2.     View your website in multiple resolutions - Use a tool such as the Web DeveloperTool Bar to change your window size to any resolution. Get the most popular resolutions from Analytics and take a peek into what those customers see. Typically the most common will be 1024x768. Is your website optimized for the top 3 or 4 resolutions?  Do customers have to squint or scroll? 

3.     Add a Search Box(or make sure your current one works) - Search is getting to be very universal in our lives. Some website visitors will go directly to a search box and type in what they are looking for. If you have a search do some testing to ensure it returns the correct or most relevant results.

4.     Use Testimonials or Reviews - One of the world's oldest marketing tactics can often be left out in design. Ensure the customer gets instant confidence in your product or service. Obtain reviews or testimonials from previous customers and broadcast it to the viewer. In an eCommerce setting customers should be able to submit their own product reviews easily. 

5.     Test your load time - Speed is more relevant than ever in this day. The best website could be the worst if it loads slowly. You have only a handful of seconds to keep the visitor on your page. If majority of those seconds are done sitting at a white screen with a small load bar - you’re almost certain to lose that customer. Shoot for a load time below four seconds per page. Two tools for testing and suggestions: FireBug Page Speed or Yahoo! YSlow

These are five of many ways you could increase conversion on a website. Want more? Listen to your customer. They will provide you the best input on where or what to improve on your website. 

July 13^th to July 15^th showed the world what the future of internet advertising could be. Using an ingenious social media campaign, Old Spice blended their hilarious TV spokesperson with the viral power of the internet. For about 48 hours, the manly “Old Spice Man” answered questions he received via Twitter, Face Book, YouTube, Etc. At the end of the 48 hours, Old Spice had 7,258,771 YouTube channel views, 72,329 Twitter followers, and a viral buzz that is still flooding internet content days later.

Old Spice has been widely successful with their new “Old Spice Man” campaign portrayed by actor Isaiah Mustafa. These commercials feature a shirtless Mustafa talking directly to the ladies at home reassuring them that even though their men can’t look like him, they can smell like him. The Old Spice Man doesn’t only appeal to ladies though. Creative director of the campaign, Iain Tait, explained they wanted a “woman’s man that was okay for men to love” so they came up with a character that could win over any crowd with his loveable manliness.

Recently, Old Spice kicked it up a notch with their latest segment of the Old Spice Man saga - real time internet advertising. For about 48 hours, Old Spice received thousands of questions from Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites for the Old Spice Man to hopefully answer. Answers were posted about every 30 minutes with a hysterical response to the lucky user’s question. Famous celebrities and athletes even fell for the Old Spice Man’s scent including; Alyssa Milano, Apollo Ohno, and social media great, Kevin Rose (founder of Digg). It seemed love even began to blossom between Mustafa & Milano as they exchanged seven flirtatious messages!

Celebrities weren’t the only ones to get the attention of the Old Spice Man. Mustafa thoughtfully answered the inquiries of mere commoners as well. Some of the highlights were; consulting a Doctor that Old Spice could safely & effectively replace a human heart, coaching hockey players that old spice will help them score thousands of goals (only if the opposing goalie wasn’t wearing Old Spice) and a personal favorite - engagement liaison between Angela A. Hutt-Chamberlin & Johannes S. Beales.

Unsurprisingly, the two day Q & A session has taken the internet by storm and has gone completely viral. Hundreds upon hundreds of users are tweeting, re-tweeting, sharing, liking & digging the videos like there is no tomorrow. The graph below shows search inquiries for the highlighted keywords from the last 30 days. 

From Google Insights For Search

Google search engine inquiries spike dramatically the day the mini commercials started posting on YouTube. More impressively, this is not tracking any redistribution of the content like sharing and re-tweeting. This graph is solely based on Google search traffic.

Wieden + Kennedy, the advertising agency behind the Old Spice Man campaign, clearly got it right on this one. They understood the potential of the internet to quickly & efficiently distribute vast amounts of information in nearly real time. They also didn't try to re-invent the wheel and instead used well established and popular social mediums to engage users & promote their videos.

 Most importantly, they designed a character and campaign that worked for all advertising mediums. The real challenge in today’s market is to develop a marketing strategy that can be applied to all the advertising outlets. Too often lately, firms have been “dumbing” down their websites to be iPad compatible or exchanging personal meet & greets for weekly chat rooms. Technology is evolving at a fantastic rate, and it’s great; but the new marketing guru will be able to synchronize internet marketing with the already established media channels. Internet marketing is the most effective when used in conjunction with traditional mediums like TV, Radio & Print. Wieden + Kennedy clearly knows that, who’s next?

Welcome to the first Design Ninja blog post. This is number one of a series of Design aimed blog posts so get your Pixel Katana’s ready because it’s game time. Today’s topic, Fonts of Fury!

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Last week most of the design team here at E-dreamz went to an Adobe CS5 Seminar. After seeing the demo of the suite, I believe making the jump – especially if going from CS3 to CS5 - will greatly improve the way designer’s work. We discovered how we could finish routine tasks, from masking images to adjusting layouts to customizing strokes, more quickly and efficiently with new features in Photoshop CS5 Extended, Illustrator CS5, and Flash CS5. I’m most excited about the new version of Photoshop. Some of my initial impressions of its most notable new features:

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