The death of Steve Jobs last month naturally prompted a huge amount of media coverage and surprisingly an outpouring of emotion online as devotees came to terms with the passing of the Apple visionary. You could forgive the twitterati for generalising on the cause of death but many official news reports continued to refer to his diagnosis as pancreatic cancer.

In fact, Jobs had been suffering from pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor (pNET), a slow growing and rare cancer that is often confused with the more aggressive pancreatic cancer. This misinformation underlines the need for better awareness and understanding of NET cancers and is exactly what our client, NET Cancer Day, aims to do via a newly designed website and social media strategy which launches today.

Now in its second year, Worldwide NET Cancer Awareness Day (WNCAD – an informal partnership between NET organisations from around the world) aims to raise awareness about cancers called neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) and the need for timely detection, diagnosis and treatment; bring hope to patients, their caregivers and families; and drive action. More than 50% of NET patients are incorrectly diagnosed and initially treated for the wrong disease, for three to seven years on average.

Why the zebra?

The zebra mascot is derived from the campaign’s zebra-striped ribbon logo. It stems from the fact, medical students in some countries are taught, “When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras” to encourage them to think about the most likely and common cause of symptoms.  However, this approach risks that rarer diseases like NET cancers (“zebras”) will be overlooked because the symptoms are similar to those of more common diseases such as Crohn’s, IBS, asthma or rosacea (“horses”).

Building on the first year’s success

Dusted were briefed on the redevelopment of the Worldwide NET Cancer Day website after being appointed in August and following the successful redesign of the NET Patient Foundation website (which represents patients and carers in the UK). In its first year, WNCAD received more than 5,000 signatures to their online proclamation and this year the target is for site visitors to show their support via a global map featuring the zebra mascot and a virtual journey around the world. Sharing this message via Facebook, Twitter and email is naturally a key part of support strategy.

Continuing with the global community theme (and social media aspect), another map element of the site aims to join people together from across the world in a global video event brought ‘live’ on the day itself – November 10. As the day moves west, video clips (pulled from YouTube) will become available to watch – from Singapore to Sweden, from the UK to the USA – visitors will see how the World NET Community is working together to raise awareness of NET cancers around the globe.

Photo credit: Flickr user wwarby

The iconic luxury brand, Orient Express, launched its first Stateside digital awareness campaign last week and Dusted were responsible for a key part of the development. Working alongside Chandelier Creative and Criterion Global in New York, Dusted built and integrated a microsite and various social media channels, featuring nine short films, which follow the travel experiences of an eclectic and engaging cast of fictional characters and real life staff members reside.

From the sparkling canals of Venice to the ‘Lost City’ of Machu Picchu, A Journey Like No Other, follows Duke, Lauren, Penelope and Max as they travel Orient-Express’ world of iconic hotels and unique experiences. This family journeys in style, seeking out adventure and enjoying their time together in their own individual ways.

Properties selected from within the diverse portfolio to showcase the Orient-Express hallmarks of authenticity and character are a romantic journey from Paris to Venice on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express train, a celebratory visit to Hotel Cipriani in Venice, a vacation at the Copacabana Palace in Rio de Janeiro, and a trip to Cuzco, Peru, to explore the delights of Hotel Monasterio, Machu Picchu Sanctuary Lodge, and the Hiram Bingham train.

The videos have been produced by Swedish film-maker, Kalle Gustafsson, who is renowned for the style and class he brings to his fashion photography and work with luxury brands. The Orient-Express films are artistically graded and set to commissioned music with voice over by renowned actor Bill Nighy.

Orient-Express is currently ranked first in its competitive set of 12 global luxury hospitality brands in the areas of service and emotional intelligence by Leading Quality Assurance. A proud association for Dusted.

Dusted USA continues to gain a foothold in the American market and just before Christmas, saw the launch of Donald Haack Diamonds & Fine Gems (DHD) – the highly respected jewelry store based in Charlotte, NC. Dusted were commissioned to redesign and build a new site for DHD, who were looking to update and drastically improve their online presence before venturing on a market push this year.

While the redesign was of great importance, the need for a Content Management System (CMS) was also a priority. Due to frequent changes in their product inventory, DHD required the ability to update their website catalog and content in-house.

In addition to the website build, we were also tasked with managing their social media presence (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) and providing an e-mail marketing platform that would enable DHD to easily create ‘e-blasts‘ and analyze the associated data (open rates, click-thrus, etc).

Alongside the online development, DHD were also planning their retail space with Dave Temple and Mike Jeffcoat of Temple + Jeffcoat, a Charlotte based creative firm who developed The Proposals, a series of DHD videos. With just four months until Christmas, we all had our work cut-out to communicate effectively and successfully deliver a new off and on-line brand.

As the project kicked-off, it quickly became clear that in order to successfully modernize the website and develop a social media offering, the existing identity needed a refresh. Luckily, our creative resource has a flair for typography and we were able to offer several solutions before moving forward with a new layout that translates very well across other digital platforms. This new identity is also soon to appear at their retail location, which will improve their visibility and attract new customers around the South Park area of Charlotte.

Although attracting a new, ‘modern’ audience was high on DHD’s list of priorities, maintaining their tradition, ethos and existing loyal customer base was also a top priority. It was vital that we adhered to their core messages – one of quality, knowledge and trust – whilst incorporating several attributes that would provide a fresh, modern approach.

In order to communicate this message, and encourage online customers to make contact, it was important to produce high quality product photography for the catalog. The shots were taken by Steve Cook who did a great job in capturing the essence of the jewelry and providing the photos which worked within the redesigned website.

The new website has been live for two months now, with an immediate upturn in visitors, pageviews, time on site and a drastic reduction in bounce rate. The email marketing platform has also successfully kept their customers up-to-date with the latest offerings and helped to communicate the revised identity and encourage brand recognition.

Moving forward, we will continue to work alongside Temple + Jeffcoat to manage the DHD brand and support their growing online presence.

The session was led by Bermon Painter (@bermonpainter), Dustan Kasten (@iamdustan) and Assaf Weinberg (@assafweinberg) and hosted at Ally Bank. Apparently Ally have a great UX group with their own usability lab but due to the unexpected popularity of the meetup, we had to utilise a conference room for the user testing and discussion.

Remote Testing Tools

The session started with a presentation, which suggested the use of inexpensive online tools to run usability tests. Here are a few of recommendations:

FiveSecondTest – Conducting a five second test allows you to find out which parts of your designs are the most prominent

There are two main options with this tool:

1. Memory Test – Users get 5 seconds to review the design and asked to remember specific elements.
2. Click Test – Users get 5 seconds to localate and click on specific elements

You can run closed or open tests but most of the testers are web savvy so make sure to read through and extropolate the most useful test results.

Navflow – Navflow helps you improve your conversion rates by analysing how people navigate around your websites and applications

With this tool, you upload a series of images that represent a multiple page user path. As with fivesecondtest, you can have an open or closed test (handy for sensitive mockups) but in this case there is no time limit.

Websort – enables you to conduct remote card sorting online.

It’s a great way to gather feedback from users about how information on your site should be managed. You simply create a study, invite users via a link and analyse the results.

Websort also allows you to export your study for use on PlainFrame, which is ‘usability testing for website navigation and app menus’. This tool will present results on how users interact with your navigation structure, which plays an important role in the usability and ease of navigation of your site.

Although these tools cannot compare with a fully functional testing lab, the benefit is that the tools are inexpensive and allow you to return test results very quickly.

Coffee Shop Testing

If you are keen on lab situations then there is a great alternative – ‘Coffee Shop’ testing. All you need is a laptop, specific questions and goals, a friendly personality and some courage, oh and maybe some ‘sweetners’ as a back up. Major benefits of this type of testing are that you don’t have to recruit heavily or use expensive resources and you can run through several iterations (five users per iteration) in one week.

As with any user testing, planning is key! You must know what you are testing, have a clear set of goals (e.g clarity of labels, ease of signup), specify your methodology and target audience, and have a strategy to measure your results.

Testing Tips

Assaf Weinberg is an advocate of these tests as he’s experienced success when conducting tests for Travelocity. Here are few tips to completing successful test:

• You must test the test prior to using it in the coffee shop.
• You need to start with warm questions. It’s Important to start by making the user feel comfortable by providing some background and discussing various subjects with them, such as their hobbies and interests.
• Let the user know what’s going to happen before you do it e.g I’m going to show the website homepage.
• Encourage the user to explore and explain their experience.
• You must be careful not to lead the subjects. Ask open questions.
• Make it clear that there are no wrong answers.
• Don’t use the words: ‘We’, ‘Test’ or ‘Survey’. People don’t like to feel that they are being tested or are conducting surveys. They also don’t like the suggestion that you are not alone in conducting the test.
• Do use the words: ‘I’, ‘Help’ and ‘Opinion’. People love to help and offer opions, it gives them a feeling of value.
• A gift card can help sway the user your way if they are undecided about helping or offering an opinion.
• Try not to take notes during the test.

Startbucks is a great place to carry out the tests as there are lots of corporate users and not many highly experienced web savvy users, who could potentially distort your test results. You can also buy (multi-location) gift cards which can be used to sway the undecided users.

Testing Users

At the end of the presentation, we watched as test users were walked through an example website. In each case the user was shown the website for 5/7 seconds then asked to remember the elements. Open questions such as ‘Look around and let us know how you feel’, ‘is there anything else that would interest you’, ‘is that what you expected’, and ‘what do you know about the site’ were used to great effect. The results from the test presented the website developer with suggestions and recommendation on how they could improve the user experience and sign-up rate. It is obvious from these examples that user testing is an essential part of the development process, which can be included in a project inexpensively.

“The name ‘BarCamp’ is a playful allusion to the event’s origins, with reference to the hacker slang term, foobar: BarCamp arose as a spin-off of Foo Camp, an annual invitation-only participant driven conference hosted by open source publishing luminary Tim O’Reilly.”

Wikipedia: BarCamp

The event was organised by volunteers and funded by sponsors from various industries. There was a wide range of pitches, which were voted upon and then scheduled into the morning and afternoon sessions.

As usual at conferences I had a tough time deciding which sessions to choose but in the end, I went for the following:

• iPhone app development
• Intro to HTML 5
• UI/UX Web Application Interfaces
• How to get the other 9 places on Google
• How to Market Anything Online

I was disappointed to have missed Down the Rabbit Hole, Balloon Twisting, Zero Budget Film Making and Eco box Shipping Containers as Home Sweet Home, as I’m sure they turned out to be pretty entertaining! Other sessions are listed at the end of this article.

In order to give you a taste of the session content, I have provided my notes from the sessions.

iPhone app development – Jeremy Olsen & Wess Cope

This presentation was split in two. The first section, lead by Jeremy Olsen, discussed the success of particular apps on the iTunes store. It was interesting to hear the opinions, many of which encouraged the use of rich interface design over basic functionality. Discussion also surrounded ‘hit base’ apps needing a large product launch to force sales and make it into the top 100.

The second section centered around the technical aspects of app development. Wess Cope detailed his methods of app development using web services, encouraging the storage of data in Google’s App Engine. He also recommended Stanford’s free iPhone Application Programming Series.

Intro to HTML 5 – Adam Hunter

Adam led this session which touched upon some of the elements HTML5. The main items were Geolocation, drag and drop, paste across domains, canvas tag, form validation, local storage and @font-face.
A more detailed explanation with examples can be found here: HTML5 Presentation

During discussions Wess Cope recommended the use of Sproutcore. Sproutcore is used by the Apple UI team and I’m told delivers HTML5 extremely fast!

“SproutCore is an open-source JavaScript framework. Its goal is to allow developers to create web applications with advanced capabilities and a user experience comparable to that of desktop applications.”

Wikipedia: SproutCore

UI/UX Web Application Interface – Wess Cope & Justin Holt

This was an interesting session which looked at interface design and user testing. Justin Holt and Wess Cope presented their UI experiences with heels.com and sixcentral.com respectively. Heels.com recently went through an impressive re-design, based upon extensive user feedback. Justin, a designer for heels.com, highlighted need for clear layout, navigation and strong ‘call-to’ action elements on sites with such a vast amount of content.

Wess, a developer of sixcentral.com spoke of the beta testing process and the invaluable feedback from testers. By opening up the application to 100 users, from different industries, it enabled them to create an application which suited the needs of most prospective users. He also touched upon ‘hallway testing’ and importance of colour.

Recommended tools were Lighthouse (bug tracking) and Get Satisfaction (user feedback and support).

Getting the 9 other listings on page 1 of Google – Robert Enriquez

Robert presented tips which will help your site rank on page 1 of Google.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
To achieve a page one listing on Google it is important to write articles, press releases, post videos and events, utilise social media tools, submit to relevant directories and optimise your Google business listing by including targeted keywords.

Here’s a list of sites where you can post articles:

• Ezine
• Goarticles
• Buzzle
• Free Library

Press releases can be posted on the following sites:

• Prlog
• Free Press Release
• PRWeb
• Marketwire
• PRNewswire

Videos can be posted here:

• Youtube
• Metacafe
• Dailymotion
• Viddler
• TubeMogul

Digital Asset Optimization (DAO)
It is important to include targeted keywords in titles, descriptions and alt tags of your assets. The asset description should also include unique content if possible.

You should concentrate on gathering the correct ‘back links’ to your digital assets. In many cases, the sites hosting your assets (YouTube etc) may provide more than one link, it is important to reference the link which Google ranks highly.

Online Reputation Management (ORM)
In order to maintain a reputable presence online, it is important to manage your profile on social media sites such as Linkedin, Twitter, and Facebook. You can use services such as KnowEm to control and even register your company name on various sites.

Universal Search
Finally, Robert encouraged the submission of content to more than 3-5 sites, which will increase the possibility of link referrals. This can be time consuming so you should use use 3rd party sites for faster and/or large submissions.

How to Market Anything Online – Corey Creed

In this session Corey introduced his 4Ps of Internet Marketing, which if you follow closely, we help you to effectively market your product online. A brief summary of the 4Ps are below:

Position Marketing
This relates to your position in search engines. Corey spoke of the importance of people knowing about your product (in order for them to find you with their keywords). You need to understand the keywords users search for to find your product and avoid concentrating on the name of your company. Google AdWords Keyword Tool can be very helpful during the keyword research phase. It may also be helpful to budget for an initial Google AdWords campaign as this is helpful in finding out user search patterns, which you can use to rank well organically in the future.

Partnership Marketing:
The importance of partnership marketing cannot be understated. It is extremely important to build trusted online partnerships, as this will help to promote your products. There are many ways to create partnerships, which include utilising trusted directories, social media networks (Twitter, YouTube, Facebook), article sites (eZine) and press release sites. Working at these relationships encourage people to learn, talk and share your products.

Permission Marketing
If a user has given you permission to market to them, the likelihood is that they know, like and trust you and are extremely valuable as they are interested in your products. In order to gain permission, it is important to encourage users to sign up for your email newsletter, RSS and social media feeds. Email newsletters are proven to work but you must take great care in presenting concise content in a well designed format. Another handy tip is to send a response exactly 24 hours after sign-up as there is a good chance that the user will be online and will remember your company.

(im)Provement
The presentation of your branding, website, emails, content and social media presence is extremely important as you need to present a professional, trustworthy image. Research has shown that users will spend more money on your website if it looks credible.

Along with branding and design, you should also assess your website analytics and recognise user patters such as ‘enter’ and ‘exit’ pages. You can also increase conversions by creating promotional pages for targeted campaigns (Google AdWords).

Talking Shop

Along with the presenters, I had a great time chatting with locals in attendance which included Josh McGlinn, Jeff Elder, Ben Ullman, Derek Hollis and David Wells. Oh and I mustn’t forget a big thanks goes to Lincoln Baxter III for sending through his notes from the marketing session!

The sessions I didn’t make

• 45 Questions about the Web
• Personal vs business brands – by @summerplum
• Manage Social Networks – by @dizzySEO
• How to write your resume
• Teaching geeks to talk to suits
• Eco box shipping containers as home sweet home
• Simple Content Management
• Fail Camp
• Future of Journalism
• Other Phones (Palm Pre)
• Creating webinars

Here are some photos and articles (via @budesigns)

• James Wilamor’s Flickr photos
• Cara Couture’s Flickr photos
• Tom Bonner’s Flickr photos
• Get a little weirder, Charlotte by Jeff Elder
• Technology, Media “Unconference” Draws More Than 100 To Area 15, by Andria Krewson
• David Zimmerman’s notes from Manage Your Social Networks

Earlier this week, I was invited along to my local Jelly session show as their special podcast guest to chat about Dusted’s plans to branch out into the United States. For the past few years, ‘local’ for me has been Charlotte, North Carolina where Dusted is soon to open its first overseas office.

Recorded live from Mez at the Epicentre in uptown, I spoke with Josh McGlinn and Nathan Longbrook at CLTJelly about everything from English accents, European tastes, Atlantic exchange programmes and of course, how Dusted is looking to expand to Charlotte, why we chose the city, and our plans for the future.

Listen to the podcast here: JellyCast 5: British Invasion!

CLTJelly was started as a way to bring freelancers together in a casual setting to share ideas, collaborate, and co-work. Jelly sessions have been hosted all over the country and though originally intended for freelancers, CLTJelly is open to anyone who wants to participate. JellyCast is a recorded segment (think podcast) that takes place on location during CLTJelly.

Photo credit: Flickr user spyndle

During the run up to Christmas, the guys in the office could probably justify having lingerie sites stored in their browser history as they rigorously research that perfect gift for their loved ones. Recently though, we’ve had further good reason to give our browsers a good work out as we delved into the on-line, high-end, underwear space in preparation for Lingerie Miami – a newly launched web site for a spectacular runway show of the world’s most luxurious lingerie labels.

The show will be showcasing leading international lingerie brands such as Agent Provocateur, Fifi Chachnil, Carine Gilson, alongside a salute to the exquisite couture origins of corsetry with the creations of world renowned designer Vivienne Westwood and corsetiere-to-the-stars, Mr Pearl.

But this isn’t just an indulgent excuse to see glamorous supermodels sashay down the runway – Lingerie Miami is actually a hybrid fashion/charity event created by Renata Black of the 7Bar Group, dedicated to funding microfinance programs to empower women assisting them out of poverty around the globe. “Philanthropy made sexy” is how Renata describes it.

Dusted were appointed to create the web site as a focal point of a marketing strategy which kicked-off in style last week with a launch party at Downtown Cipriani during New York Fashion Week. Corinne Mohr of Time Out NY described the evening as “One of the most meaningful events of the week”.

The show is being held in the magical setting of the Italianate Vizcaya Museum and Gardens overlooking Biscayne Bay, Miami, Florida in February next year.

The game forms the basis of a data capture programme and was launched as part of the Administrative Professionals Conference in Canada. Hosted by professional image advisor, Kimberly Law each player is guided through three simple style scenarios that help demonstrate the objective of the site – fashion tips, styling solutions and office strategies for savvy admins. In other words, how what you wear can help you exude confidence, be taken seriously and get ahead.

Hailed as “the business world’s own Oscars” (New York Post, April 27, 2005), The American Business Awards are the only national; all-encompassing awards program honouring great performances in business.

Stevie Award winners will be announced during the annual gala on Thursday, June 12 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City. More than 600 executives from across the USA are expected to attend. The ceremonies will be broadcast on radio nationwide by the Business TalkRadio Network and hosted by Liz Claman of FOX Business Network.

Terra Firma, the leading private equity house, launched the Chinese version of their web site late last month. Working directly with their PR agency in Beijing (and around the Chinese New Year) our rapid development plan saw more than 70% of the English site reproduced for far eastern territories.

Sticking with Asia for a moment, Dusted has also designed and produced the latest Japanese quarterly reports for Terra Firma, which will be rolling off the presses at Good News later this week. The Capital Partner reports are small print run produced solely for their Japanese fund investors and along with the English versions, clearly emphasise Terra Firma’s reputation as a leading private equity firm.

Meanwhile, across the pond in Massachusetts, PRO Insurance Solutions has launched their new US division; PRO IS Inc. and Dusted have been responsible for the design and development of all the Boston office campaign collateral. Using a concept of ‘working together worldwide’, we produced advertising on and off-line which was used to drive traffic to a dedicated micro-site for the North American audience.

Beijing, Boston and Bermondsey. Dusted.