e Magus

Hey, Website! Hey yourself, User. What brings you here? I hear you are a cool guy/place to hang around with :) Thanks! Wow!! Didn't know that I'm that famous ;) tbh I'm just trying to be like you - More human, more friendly :) …and so forth, the online conversation goes on between the user & the brand Every brand website is a potential storyteller and technology is a great enabler of stories. The pace at which technology is getting adopted, especially the bot & AI technologies, chatting and talking websites are going to be the future storytellers of the brand. Websites have come a long way.  From the static 'online catalogs' of early 90's to animated Flash based website of 2000's and the current search friendly and dynamic websites (with some personalization and responsive)…. They were led by customer friendly approach which was driven by the device & the purpose - Informational to Interactional to Engagement. The future purpo...

Working for a digital agency ( www.mrmworldwide.com ), I come across various digital marketing requirements from clients. One common client requirement is - website redesign/ changes. And familiar client remarks in such cases are – “Make it look different from the existing website”, “Identify best practices from other website and let’s incorporate the same” . On the face of it, it looks like a very common and straightforward ask …. But the truth is far, far true. Sheryl Crow sang- A change would do you good. But the truth is, as humans, we seek familiarity. Be it the people we meet, the road we take from home to office, and in majority of the cases the food we eat….we tend to seen familiarity; so would it not be true even for our other habits including online. Yet, when as digital marketers we think about redesigning a website, we mostly seek complete change in the design including structural changes with little regard to the impact on user path A casual glance into any website an...

An interesting news article that came out a few weeks back has got me thinking…. Facebook has overtaken Google to become the most popular website in the United States for the first time, according to new data from Hitwise, which measures Internet traffic. For the week ending March 13, the social networking juggernaut registered 7.07% market share, beating the search giant's 7.03% market share. See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/8XVAKZ What got me thinking was how could Facebook in such a short span of time overtake Google -the default destination for millions of internet users globally? The data shows dramatic rise of Facebook- this can be attributed to the fact that people are spending more time on the net socializing, and an average user visits more pages on Facebook (not sure though if the Facebook Chat window refreshes are counted as part of the Hitwise data as the chart shows a phenomenal increase since April 2009). On a different note, a person usually visits ...

3 incidents. 3 clients. Same condition. Client #1 had to get a website done… their campaign was about to launch in 1 weeks time and they haven’t decided on what their website should contain and how it would look. Now they wanted a website FAST. Client #2 wants to do an online advertising… a lead generation campaign… The creative haven’t been cracked; the landing page not yet ready; and the database (lead capturing) haven’t been thought about. But they wanted to go live FAST. Client #3 just got an approval for doing some social media marketing. They want to do ‘something’ in SM space… why, what and how…they are not sure of… But they want to create a Facebook page, and they want it FAST. When it comes to Digital Marketing every client wants things done FAST. I’m curious to know who had sold the idea to the world that every thing about Digital Marketing is FAST. Looking back at my own experience, I realize that during the early days of internet marketing… there was resource time available...

Last few weeks I have been busy doing 2 things: Talking to various ‘online’ ad agencies on various projects Trying to sell to a client the importance of having a kick-ass website Most of the ad agencies have a long list of ‘great’ work done in terms of website creation. Some were really good, but most of them were template stuff. All of them gave a list of clientele (usually an US or European Client). It kind of got me interesting. I kept asking them various questions on the website creation and design.. The thought, the strategy, etc… Most cases the owners were not giving any proper response to some basic questions… This one takes the cake: Question: how do you know that the website you created is a successful one? Answer: It has to be successful. The client has paid me the monies. The unfortunate part is that most of the agencies who build websites do not put any thought into it. A part of the blame would also go to the clients, most of them just want an online presence, where peop...