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Takeaways From a Year of TikTok: 2021-of-a-kind

DECEMBER 13, 2021

TikTok proved that it’s here to stay and sourcing trends left and right. The video platform released their Year on TikTok: 2021-of-a-kind report. This recap lets you recall all the audio, entertainment, and advertising twists and turns that have happened along the way this year.

Let’s breakdown the biggest happenings in the world of TikTok in 2021:

In 2021, over 1 billion people tuned into TikTok.
For You feeds showed all sorts of diversity in content, but global trending content included comedy, food, and family videos.
Breaking down those family videos further: animals, significant other posts, and cute kids ruled those joy-bringing categories.
The music industry is shaped by TikTok and TikTok is shaped by audio. Some music is even altered to fit in with TikTok trends, and maximize sales with remixes.
TikTok celebrates the HECK out of their creators and is very creator-friendly as a platform. Lifestyle, technology, education, and fashion communities saw the most global creator growth.
It’s advertising-friendly, too. TikTok is a major source for retail and influencer markets with over 6 billion views of #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt.
TikTok’s tech boundaries have been pushed all year and their technology is only growing. They even added a new Q&A feature at the release of this report called “Ask on TikTok.”

We hope your brand isn’t missing out on this platform! TikTok broke down their stats and deets by US market and then globally. See their full report for all the trends, top videos, and creators they listed.

The Ultimate, 80+ Things Website Launch Checklist

DECEMBER 12, 2021

What’s poppin’ with your website? There is a lot of work hat goes into a well-designed, secure, solidly built website. There are the essentials, and then there are the little details in between. It can be easy to miss something.

Luckily, HubSpot put together a big ol’ list of things to check before, during, and after your website launch. So even if you have an established website already, you can still use this a guide to see if it is following all the best practices out there.

Now we can’t fit all of the checklist here, so we wanted to go through some of our favorites that often get overlooked when making websites:

Choose your CMS wisely. There are some options out there, but always make sure your CMS can organize your content, schedule it, and be optimized for SEO in a way that your team can manage.
Strategize your conversion paths. A website is an essential (usually the most essential) part to feeding your funnel. You’ll need to figure out exactly what actions you want users to take or how you’ll capture their information for your sales team.
Make sure it’s all trackable. You don’t want your website to be left in the dark. Tracking is how you will figure out things are working, so you’ll need analytic software.
Test it again! User experience and content are never to be set in stone. A/B post-launch and periodically to make sure you’re fine-tuning your site’s pages.
Compliance in all the right places. This can include being accessible for users with disabilities (WAI-ARIA), announcing if the website uses cookies, having the right usage rights, have terms and privacy policies visible to website visitors, and PCI compliance.

Check the full HubSpot list for all of the dirty deets to check out for your website.

4 Accessibility Misconceptions from Brands

DECEMBER 8, 2021

Our job as designers, researchers, and product managers is to make our work accessibile. There are no downsides to accessibility and still brands are getting it wrong. Why is that?

There still some corners that are easy to cut because of misconceptions about accessibility. Let’s get into the biggest four:

“Accessibility only helps a fraction of my users”: According to the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 1 billion people worldwide, 15% of the total population, live with disabilities. Those aren’t small numbers, people.
“Building in accessibility isn’t worth the time”: If you “bake in” accessibility into projects from the beginning, it reduces rework. So standardizing accessible components increases operational efficiency. Plus, accessibility spurs innovation. Touch screens, text-to-speech, audiobooks, electronic toothbrushes, and voice controls were all born out of accessibility.
“We don’t NEED to be compliant”: Yikes! That’s not just a misconception, it’s a mistake. Accessibility lawsuits are no joke and have seen an increase over the years. Compliancy ends up saving you from that risk. We can’t stress enough that building in accessibility from the start will save you both time and money.
“There is no ROI on accessibility”: Those 61 million people is a significant untapped market if your digital properties aren’t accessible to them. Improving accessibility issues could end up impacting your revenue overall.

So it’s time to shake off the misconceptions and keep accessibility from being an afterthought in your work. Own accessibility as an essential part of your process and a shared responsibility of the team.

For specific examples and advice on how to bring accessibility to the forefront, check out the full Customer Experience Magazine article.

10 Contact Form Design Best Practices

DECEMBER 6, 2021

Forms are often essential to sites needing to grab the information of users to send them more materials later, keep them in their funnels, or have them sign up for all sorts of things.

If you have forms and landing pages that you want people to fill out, here are 10 best practices to know:

Fool-proof your forms: It’s better to be crystal clear when possible. Contact for what? Explain what this form is being used for or where it is going.
Add all the hints: So there’s adding some “why” behind a contact form, but it’s also helpful to add the “how” along the way, too. Point out extra information for fields with microcopy.
Test, test, test: As with everything involving a web experience, test your form like a visitor.
Think before you CAPTCHA: Unless you’re getting many spam responses, CAPTCHAs can be clunky. We suggest invisible ReCAPTCHAs instead
Don’t use a form in a pop-up window: It’s just not something users dig.
Not every field should be required: Give your visitors some flexibility because no one likes groaning when they have to fill out every single field.
Keep it simple: Keep it short, simple, and in context.
Have an open-ended field: As we said, keep your forms simple, but leave one open-ended question for the thoughts, comments, ideas of your visitors.
Be consistent: Whatever text formatting you follow (caps, size, lowercase, etc.), make sure you follow through.
Keep it ethical: Duh, phishing is bad. Stealing passwords, credit card numbers, etc. is illegal and can cause you a lot of trouble. Use your forms for good.

Jotform is a custom form-builder that knows a thing or two about forms. Check out their full post for more examples on form how-tos.

Google Tag Manager vs. the Global Site Tag

DECEMBER 1, 2021

Google Tag Manager and the Global Site Tag can seem interchangeable, but they are two different tools. Luckily, MeasureSchool has a full guide on the similarities and differences between them.

So, what are we talking about here?

Google Tag Manager: is a tag management system that acts as a common tool for running all different tracking tags.
The Global Site Tag (gtag.js): is a tracking code that tracks information to forward to other Google tools like Google Analytics. You install it in the header section of your website.

Okay…what’s the difference?

So both methods can deploy tracking points to a variety of Google tools. But let’s get into how they are different:

Third-party marketing tool compatibility – Despite the name, the Global Site Tag only plays nice with Google Tools and the Google Tag Manager allows you to send data to any tool that has a JavaScript-based tracking code.
Functionality – gtag.js is very straightforward as far as functioning with data, but the Google Tage Manager has more features, especially for testing or debugging.
User Interface – Google Tag Manager requires very little coding knowledge with a more user-friendly interface (with features like those previously mentioned). With the gtag.js, you’ll need to do all your site’s tracking coding on your own, so it’s an invisible part of your site.

Cool. So which one do I use?

Both have benefits depending on your tagging purposes. For the most part, Google tag Manager is easier for marketers to navigate, especially without developer help. Global Site Tag is a mini segment of Google Tag Manager, so it’s just not as flexible as Google Tag Manager. If you have a need for manual tag set-up, though, gtag.js is the move.

To see more technical examples and how-to’s (and no-no’s), check out MeasureSchool’s full article with an accompanying video.

Advocacy Marketing: How to Do It

NOVEMBER 30, 2021

You can’t buy someone’s love (most of the time). This is also true for customer advocacy marketing, too which isn’t as structured as other similar marketing methods like influencer or ambassador marketing. It’s more about principles for your customer base.

Here are some ideas for your next advocacy strategy:

Provide an excellent product or service: Duh, right? It doesn’t matter how fantastic your marketing is without a top-notch product or service. Customers won’t become advocates and fans unless it’s worth it.
Deliver an unforgettable brand experience: Product? Check. Experience? Double-check. Every interaction customers have with your business contributes to their experience. The better these experiences are, the more likely a customer will share one.
Use a customer-first mentality: Show your customers that you value their opinion. Publicly responding on social media, publishing content based on customer suggestions, and asking questions are great ways to show them you’re actively listening. But the best way to stay customer-first is to continue to deliver on your promises as a brand.
Make it easy on your customers: Make it as easy as possible for your advocates to share information (and easy for you to track, too). Provide hashtags, sharable social links like ClickToTweet, or links with pre-written content.
Seek out your advocates: So you can keep on doing your best as far as brand operations, but sometimes you have to seek advocacy more actively. You can go the Net Promotor Score (NPS) route and survey your customers regularly. You can also go the social media route using listening tools or make a UGC campaign.

HubSpot’s full blog post has a bunch of real brand examples to see these strategies in action, so click below to read the full piece.

4 Survey Tips for Customer Insights

NOVEMBER 28, 2021

Customer satisfaction surveys are an essential tool for a brand. Marketers want to read minds, but asking a question directly is their best bet to knowing what’s working for users. With the feedback surveys generate, you can improve a product, service, and overall customer experience. What’s better than that? Here is how to make sure your surveys are helpful to you without being annoying to your users.

Keep It Short and Sweet: It’s not just about cutting the character count from your users’ answers – you also need to remove wordiness from your questions. Survey length is also crucial for keeping abandonment rates low. If you can give users a heads up (i.e. a 5-minute survey), that can help set expectations.
Try to Ask One Question at a Time: It’s easy for marketers to want to ask one question after another (or a bunch of follow-ups). Give people time to think through a single question before moving on to any further possible ones.
Yes/No Questions Are Your Friends: Yes/no questions require little time commitment and are straightforward. Not only are yes/no questions easy to answer, but they also make your segmenting and data tracking easier to manage.
Offer Some Incentives: People don’t like to give things up, especially data, for free. There are a lot of ways you can entice your users with things like gifts, discounts, giveaways, or credits. In most cases, it makes sense to entice customers to answer your survey.

Check out the full Influencive post for examples of customer satisfaction surveys that have worked for other brands.

The 2021 WeTransfer Ideas Report

NOVEMBER 23, 2021

What’s the big idea? WeTransfer, a sick FTP tool and awesome creative resource, released their annual Ideas Report. They asked over 10,000 people from 135 countries how their creative worlds have changed in the past year (since ya know, 2020 and 2021 have been game-changers).

The creative industry is always shifting and WeTransfer wanted to get a pulse on it. Here are the big takeaways:

Based on the surveys, Latin American creatives are more willing to push their boundaries than their peers in Europe and North America.
Gen Z respondents are citing mental health as the main creative distraction during the pandemic, and it’s a big driver for them wanting to switch jobs.
While many Gen Z creatives are exhausted with being responsible for a brand’s voice on social issues, 75% say it’s important brands take a committed stance.
Women are one of the largest drivers for social and world issues among the creative demographics surveyed.
This might not come as a surprise, but budget remains one of the biggest blocks to creative work.
The Great Resignation is no joke! 45% of global creatives are thinking of changing their jobs in the next six months. 😳

Check out the full, free report for more stats and for the friggin’ beautiful charts.

Thinking Of A Logo Redesign? This Is How To Do It

NOVEMBER 22, 2021

Your logo is a big part of your brand’s identity and well, branding. While it’s not the full picture, your logo is one of the first impressions and chance at storytelling visually. But when is it time to revisit your logo’s design? And that’s a pretty big leap to take…how do you go about it?

It might be time for a redesign when…

Your business services have grown or evolved.
You want to target new audiences
You have a dated design.

Now, if you have a well-established brand, you don’t want to lose that identity and brand equity of your existing logo. Logo design is delicate business for something so bold.

Things to consider for your logo redesign:

Gauge your audience’s attachment first. Like we said, your existing identity might already be doing the most. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, but make sure you do have the audience attachment needed to keep a logo as is.
Redesign or refresh? Make sure you know what elements of your existing logo are essential to your brand. You don’t have to change everything, maybe you just need to refine them (think of all the “ironed out” logos of the 2000s that simply updated their text treatments).
Market TF out of it. If you are making a major change to part of your brand, make it known! Explain the design, get it transitioned into your marketing, and celebrate it. Obviously, if the changes are subtle you shouldn’t promote your logo the same way. BUT we can’t stress enough that you need to communicate it internally and update your branded assets.

Logo.com, a logo generator and design inspiration resource, has the full scoop of examples (and mistakes) in their blog post.