Blog Archives
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Syndication
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November 1, 2011
Join New Signature Today at the 2011 Salsa Community Conference #salsa2011
By New SignatureNew Signature is the premier sponsor of 2011 Salsa Community Conference taking place today at the Woolly Mammoth Theater in Washington, DC. We are also the official sponsors of the “Festive Fiesta” being held from 6:30-9:00pm tonight.
If you are attending please join New Signature’s session “Making Magic with Salsa”. We will explain how you can do more with Salsa than you thought possible. Explore tips, tricks and techniques to get the most return on your investment. This is from 1:45pm-2:45pm today.
You can also engage our expert panelist on the “Engagement: Climbing the Ladder” panel with Food and Water Watch and Mobile Commons. Someone signed a petition, attended an event, made a donation but you want more. Learn how you can take your supporters to the next level. This is from 3:15pm-4:15pm today.
Hope to see you there!
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October 28, 2011
New Signature Teams Up with Mobile Commons for New Website
By Ben ByrneToday, the new website for Mobile Commons
— designed and built by New Signature — launched. We worked closely with Mobile Commons to update their brand and develop a new site architecture that would make it easier for potential clients to quickly understand what the Mobile Commons platform is — and what the benefits of using it are.The new brand was developed with the goal of presenting Mobile Commons as friendly and inspiring. We adapted the existing logo to be more dynamic and paired it with an expanded color palette (the blue is new) and new fonts to achieve a more welcoming presentation.
But the look was only a small part of the challenge. More important was re-architecting the site to more quickly communicate to users what Mobile Commons offers. This posed a unique challenge, as the audience for the site consists both of those who are looking to find out what mobile marketing is and how it works, and those who are looking for information on the Mobile Commons platform and what separates it from the competition. We also sought to position Mobile Commons as a leader in mobile marketing strategy by highlighting ideas and successes.
The new website is built on WordPress, an open source Content Management System (CMS) on top of PHP and MySQL. Often used as a blog platform, WordPress has many powerful features — including a plugin architecture and theming system — that allow it to be extended far beyond just blogging (see Mobile Commons’s case studies page for an example).
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New Signature Launches Americans United Website
By Craig Zingerline
New Signature is proud to announce a new website launch for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. We worked with the team at Americans United from discovery through launch for this new website. The website explores the issues surrounding Church and State Separation and is positioned to be both informational and action oriented.Discovery
Through analysis and research conducted during our discovery phase (which we call Phase 0), we explored several key components of the old website that were in need of updating, and also brought fresh ideas and recommendations to the table to drive change for the website.
In addition to showing a large featured content rotator on the home page, we moved key content above the fold that we knew people were regularly seeking out. During the discovery process we leveraged both qualitative and quantitative information to help determine actual user behavior on the site, and re-worked the information architecture based on this information.
Design
Working with the AU team, we outlined the goal for the site design. We wanted to create a new visual design for the website that conveyed an authoritative, current, dynamic feel, while at the same time evoking the organization’s deep history. We also wanted the design to evoke a connection to the grassroots foundation which is one of the core elements of their action-oriented mission.For this, we expanded on the existing color pallet that AU was using, but made sure to maintain the brand’s colors of red, white and blue.
Integration
The site was built using the open-source CMS Drupal, and incorporates many new modules developed to handle custom (and sometimes complex) features and functionality. We built out multiple Drupal content types, and tied in a very powerful faceted-search mechanism through Apache SolR.
To see a great example of SolR in action, check out this SolR search results page on the new site: http://www.au.org/search/site/separation
We built a very robust set of Donation management tools for the site, which include one-time and monthly giving options. This toolset allows the AU staff to create donation pages on the fly, including the ability to integrate custom “asks” for setting donation levels on the fly for repeat supporters. We built functionality that allows for posting payment through major credit cards as well as through PayPal.
We also integrated a custom SDK based map that starts at the country level, then allows for drill-down into individual state pages. These pages show local chapter information as well as legal and legislative information relevant to that state.If you have any Drupal needs, please contact us today to learn more about what we offer and how we can help.
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October 17, 2011
Two New Signature Projects Honored with Silver W3 Awards
By New Signature
One of two sites to win Silver Awards, Iamworkingmerica.com made use of HTML5 video to create an impact
The Winners of the 2011 W3 Awards were announced by the International Academy of the Visual Arts today, and we’re pleased to announce that two sites designed and built by New Signature were recognized. I Am Working America picked up a 2011 Silver Award in the Activism category, and ioby picked up not one but two 2011 Silver Awards — one for the Charitable Organizations / Non-Profit category and one for the Environmental Awareness category.
Receiving over 3,000 entries, the W3 Awards honors outstanding websites, web marketing, web video, and mobile apps created by the best interactive agencies, designers, and creators worldwide.
“This year’s W3 Winners demonstrate the out-of-the box thinking and creative execution that exemplifies what the Web is all about,” said Linda Day, the Executive Director of the IAVA. “On behalf of the entire Academy, congratulations to this year’s W³ Award entrants and winners for their dedication to pushing the limits and finding new ways to raise the bar in Web Creativity.”
We’re delighted to be so honored, and feel fortunate to work with clients that give us the opportunity to build webites of such high caliber.
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October 12, 2011
Going Live With HTML5
By Seamus Leahy and Ben ByrneWe’ve been following HTML5 for several years now, and have been coding most of our web projects in HTML5 for the last year or two.
It was back in 2004 that Mozilla and Opera wrote a joint-position paper in support of HTML (over XHTML) to solve real-life problems, which resulted in the formation by Apple, Mozilla, and Opera of the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) that has spearheading the creation of HTML5. HTML5 provides solutions for many long-standing issues in developing websites. We’ve been using parts of HTML5 to provide a leg up for our clients, utilizing portions that have support among the latest versions of all browsers while gracefully degrading in older browser versions.
One major difference between HTML5 and what came before is enhanced form support. Forms are everywhere on the web, and for years developers have turned to Javascript enhancements to provide a better experience (such as the date pickers on nearly every travel-related website). HTML5 turns these common Javascript enhancements into native features — offering the possibility of increased performance and accessibility. HTML5 has support for color pickers, a date and time picker, number spinners, sliders, validation and more.
The accessibility is a great hidden feature because it doesn’t just benefit users that need special assistant devices (screen-readers); it benefits users on non-desktop devices such as smartphones and tablets. As an example, if an HTML5 text field is set to accept only email address or URLs, the small virtual keyboard on a smartphone could show either the ‘@’ symbol or the forward slash key, saving the user time.
Thanks to Apple’s not supporting Flash on the iPhone and iPad, the mostly widely known feature of HTML5 is probably the HTML5 video element. Besides its being great by not requiring additional plugins to watch videos in the browser, it can easily be integrated into the design and interaction in ways that would be time consuming with Flash. For example, on the I Am Working America site, we used the video element to create a moving background for real visual messaging impact. For those browsers that don’t support HTML5 video, the display gracefully falls back to a static image.
Probably the biggest usage of HTML5 video on the web is YouTube, which proves HTML5′s viability: Most people aren’t even aware when they’re using YouTube’s Flash video player and when they’re seeing the HTML5 video player.
But HTML5 is not all fancy controllers and multimedia elements. HTML5 offers a variety of new HTML elements, allowing for more semantic coding that facilities indexing and other machine-reading. HTML5 also provides a whole slew of Javascript APIs for creating richer and more powerful web applications. Just going over the list of high-level features is impressive: Web Workers, File API, WebGL, Web Storage, Offline Application Cache API, Geolocation, Audio and Video API, etc.
We used the Web Storage API for Factory Farm Map to store results for location, animal, and year after the first visit in order for subsequent visits to load up without requiring a call to the server. This provides a snappier response – even a month between visits.
At New Signature, HTML5 is a real benefit because it means that less work needs to be put into doing solving trivial problems such as date pickers. It gives us technology to create ever more stunning websites.
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October 6, 2011
New Signature launches new Digital Learning Now website
By Craig Zingerline
New Signature is proud to announce a new website launch for Digital Learning Now!. We worked with the team at Digital Learning Now to plan, design and implement this new website for the organization. The website outlines their vision for the classroom of the future, incorporating Digital Learning and utilizing technology to better student engagement. It also showcases Digital Luminaries and other key players in the Digital Learning movement.This site was built using the open-source CMS WordPress, and incorporates New Signature’s own WP Easy Post Types plugin for custom content type integration on the site. It also leverages Apache SolR for a powerful website faceted search experience.
Digital Learning Now! is a national campaign to advance policies that will create a high quality digital learning environment to better prepare students with the knowledge and skills to succeed in college and careers.
Jeb Bush, former Governor of Florida 1999 – 2007, and Bob Wise, former Governor of West Virginia 2001 – 2005, serve as co-chairmen.
If you have any WordPress needs, please contact us today to learn more about what we offer and how we can help.
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September 19, 2011
ioby and AAAS MemberCentral Win Top Honors in the Web Marketing Association’s 15th Annual WebAward Competition
By New Signature
ioby (pictured) and AAAS MemberCentral websites have been recognized with the “Outstanding Website” Award in the Web Marketing Association’s 15th Annual WebAward competition. The WebAward program is the premier annual website award competition that names the best Web sites in 96 industries while setting the standard of excellence for all website development.The Web Marketing Association was founded in 1997 to help set a high standard for Internet marketing and development of the best websites on the World Wide Web. Staffed by volunteers, this organization is made up of Internet marketing, online advertising, PR, and top web site design professionals who share an interest in improving the quality of online advertising, Internet marketing, and website promotion.
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September 12, 2011
Women for Women International Launches Fall Match Campaign
By New Signature
Women for Women International has launched the organization’s Fall Match campaign.New Signature worked with Women for Women International to produce this compelling fundraising campaign for fall 2011, whereby member donations will be matched by a generous group of supporters. Women for Women International works in helping women in war-torn countries rebuild their lives both emotionally and financially, through a 1 year program of rehabilitation. New Signature’s goal is to help them reach $400k in donations!
New Signature worked with Women for Women International to develop an online communications strategy for the fall matching program. From there the New Signature team contributed and provided leadership in the areas content development, social media, graphic design, video production and website development.
You can watch the video that New Signature created for the campaign below.
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September 1, 2011
Google Analytics Multi-Channel Conversion Funnel Reporting
By Bryan Hackett
Image: Google.com
Google recently released Multi-Channel Conversion Funnel Reporting for Google Analytics.
This new functionality will drastically change how businesses and organizations evaluate the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns.
Web marketers have historically tracked “conversions” such as e-commerce purchases or membership signups by the referral information.
While valuable, this information is incomplete.
A typical web purchase usually involves several interactions with a website prior to making the purchase.
Example usage
A person interested in traveling to Miami might take the following actions before purchasing a ticket:
- They spot a promotional banner ad for a travel website, click the banner, and read the offer. They are interested by the offer, but are busy and do not make the purchase. (Banner Ad visit)
- Several days later, they search for “Miami tickets” within a search engine. They click to the same travel website and search for tickets. They have found a time and price that is attractive. They bookmark the page for a later time. (Organic Search visit)
- They return to the website by typing the name directly in the browser. The person makes the purchase at that time. (Direct visit)
In the traditional referral method, the conversion is credited as the result of a “Direct visit”.
The Multi-Channel approach extends the referral infomation to include the chain of visits that occured within the last thirty days prior to the purchase.
In our example, the conversion is credited to the Direct visit, with “assists” from the Banner Ads and Organic Search visits.
Significance
The difference in recorded visit “paths” is significant to evaluating marketing effectiveness.
In the example above, the basic referral information would lead a Marketing Analyst to overestimate the importance of direct visits to sales conversions. They would mistakenly redirect marketing budget toward the promotion of the website “brand name”.
This would actually negatively impact sales as banner ads and search engine visits are important preliminary steps in the buyer’s decision to make the purchase.
Non-Profits
This tool has important applications in the non-profit world as well. Donations and memberships would be analyzed using a similar method. By looking at the entire marketing effort, patterns in membership behavior are revealed.
This helps to justify social media and email newsletters efforts that are important to the membership action, but were not previously credited under the old refferal analysis.
Conclusion
The new Multi-Channel Conversion Funnel Reporting gives website owners a holistic view of their marketing efforts.
It will enable better decisions when allocating resources between website development, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, email newsletters, and display(banner) advertising.
This helps maximize the impact and value of important marketing budgets.
Need help with Google Analytics optimization or analysis? Contact us to learn more about our services.
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August 16, 2011
AAAS MemberCentral Wins IMA Outstanding Achievement Award
By New Signature
MemberCentral is the new website that looks at science through the eyes of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) members, celebrating their achievements and their shared belief in the transformative power of science. New Signature is proud to announce that the innovative membership website designed and built for AAAS has won the IMA Outstanding Achievement Award in the “Association” category. The Interactive Media Awards recognize the highest standards of excellence in website design and development and honors organizations for their outstanding achievement online.MemberCentral is dedicated to highlighting AAAS activities and fostering community among our members. To support these goals, the site features original content presented as webinars, videos, podcasts, blogs, and more.
AAAS selected New Signature to provide strategy and execute on this important project. New Signature worked with AAAS from concept to launch. We started by working with stakeholders to define the requirements for the website, including providing strategic direction on how best to engage target audiences. With competition for readership increasing from online publications, MemberCentral provides a new channel to showcase additional content and multimedia to AAAS 100,000+ members, as well as engage potential new members and inspire them to join. By creating new content and multimedia and by syndicating content from their many publications, AAAS is able to provide an extensive set of resources that members can consume through MemberCentral.
