The problem

Beyond Analysis had a dated site that didn’t reflect their recent rebrand and was built on an outdated and difficult to use CMS. They approached Better Things to:

Develop a content strategy that would articulate simply and clearly what Beyond Analysis do, as well as help the site with search visibility

Redesign the site to reflect the client’s recent brand refresh

Implement the site on a user-friendly CMS and ensure that every part of the site could be quickly and easily updated without requiring technical expertise

Integrate the site with the client’s social media properties.

Better Things were also asked to support Beyond Analysis’s growth by enabling them to use the website to recruit the best people in the market.

The solution

We knew that in order to make the new Beyond Analysis site standout in the competitive marketplace we had to think differently. We needed to make sure the site would remain fresh and exciting to entice visitors back on a regular basis; and to give the team at Beyond Analysis a platform to demonstrate their expertise. Making editorial content the focus of the site ensured this would happen. So we developed a content strategy that focussed on a category-driven news feed designed to show off the expertise and talent of the people behind Beyond Analysis.

We then applied Beyond Analysis’s new branding, adapting it slightly for web use with the addition of some new fonts and illustration styles, and using responsive design to ensure the site worked across a range of devices including tablet and mobile – with the floating navigation defaulting to a more traditional navigation bar at certain screen sizes.

We worked with the client to build a list of search keywords and then developed search optimised content for the entire site, and we fully integrated the site with Beyond Analysis’s social media properties, including Twitter and Facebook – pulling tweets from senior members of staff into the homepage feed using Twitter’s API and a hashtag.

Finally, we built the site on WordPress, an easy-to-use, open-source CMS and provided full user-documentation and staff training.

The result

An easy to use, easy to update website that delivers on branding and communicates exactly what Beyond Analysis are about – both in terms of what they do and their corporate culture and ethos. The site received 83% uplift in website traffic and is tracking significantly higher on a day-to-day basis for all traffic and quality indicators.

You can visit the site at www.beyondanalysis.net

I remember, back in 2008, preparing a presentation on social media and how it was starting to have a huge effect on customer services. Twitter was starting to gain traction beyond the early adopter/techie types, and brands were desperate to leap onto the band wagon. Facebook was already massive, and a relatively small number of brands were starting to use it well with others using it badly, and still more sitting on the sidelines, enviously looking in at the party, but too scared to get involved.

My advice to the client at the time was ‘you can’t afford NOT to get involved’. There had already been a number of famous cases of brands being seriously damaged by complainers who had taken their grievances to social media, and had been ignored by the brand in question. The internet had done its thing, and before the brand knew it the grouch had been turned into a cause célèbre, the public complaint and lack of brand action had gone viral, and the brand’s reputation was in tatters.

So far, so meh. Old news, right? Well yes, but recently we’ve been noticing, and getting increasingly annoyed by a new(ish) phenomena. Brand bullying. This is where some opportunist saboteur turns to Twitter complaining of poor service or poor quality or some other perceived snub from a brand, purely to see whether they can screw some free stuff out of said brand. They invariably use a holier than thou tone and seem to think that the world will side with them purely because they’re shouting, loudly and in public. And they’re not far wrong – ‘the internet’ is the ultimate champion of the little guy.

Brands often respond to this public airing of dirty washing by doing exactly what the opportunist wants – throwing a freebie at it. No matter whether the whinger was an incredibly brand-loyal person with a real grievance, and therefore worth responding to and nurturing, or someone who has heretofore demonstrated zero brand loyalty, if they complain long and loud enough, they’ll be looked after.

This pushes a button for me. It’s inherently unfair. And it actually goes against the internet ethos: the internet has given power to the individual, but (to quote Uncle Ben Parker) with great power comes great responsibility – and if the individual abuses that responsibility the power should be taken away from them. So I suddenly find myself in a slightly unlikely position, and questioning whether brands really do need to oil every squeaky wheel. Maybe there’s a better way. Maybe there’s a way to take the sting out of the complaint without giving in to the bullies. Maybe brands should stand up to them, sometimes.

This is obviously a much more delicate an operation than I make it sound, so really I’m throwing it out there as a question. Any social media managers out there care to weigh in?

The problem

English National Ballet wanted to send a Christmas greeting to their members and fans. The greeting needed to communicate ENBs Christmas programming whilst reflecting ENBs brand values, and of course be lightly dusted with a little bit of Christmas magic!

The solution

Better Things edited together existing video footage of English National Ballet’s Christmas programming (The Nutcracker and Strictly Gershwin) to create a specific piece for the season. We then embedded the video on a microsite and hid it behind an animated curtain, which opened to reveal the auto-playing video.

We also created an HTML email to drive members to the microsite.

Click here to view the ENB Christmas message. As this is seasonal content, it may be taken down at any time, so apologies of the link is dead when you click it.

The problem

Beyond Analysis asked Better Things to come up with an online device to help generate some buzz around the launch of their new website. The device needed to bring to life Beyond Analysis’s ability to ‘unlock the power of data’ – but in a fun and engaging way. It also needed to drive awareness of the website launch, and drive traffic to Beyond Analysis’s website.

The solution

Based on the understanding of the Beyond Analysis brand that we gained during our brand discovery workshop, Better Things developed a launch campaign based around a fun social game. We developed a Twitter analyser game which allowed visitors to enter their (or their friends’, or their favourite celeb’s) Twitter username to find out what personality type they are.

The game, built as a microsite, draws on individual users’ last 20 tweets, via Twitter’s API, and scrapes them for certain keywords. We developed keyword categories associated with certain ‘personality types’ – all very tongue in cheek – and then served up the results. We then built in share tools – so that the end user could share their results page with their friends via Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus.

Traffic was driven to the game via a launch email to Beyond Analysis’s database, and a PR campaign aimed at tech and marketing trade journalists, using chocolate-based bribery – see image above. The game threw up some interesting results that gave us a great PR hook – who would have dreamed, for example, that Katie Price was 100% workaholic, or Boris Johnson 100% party animal? (Rio Ferdinand on the other hand was perhaps a little more predictable, throwing up a profile of 40% gym bunny, 20% audiophile, 20% workaholic and 20% sports fan).

The result

The game resulted in positive PR coverage of the website launch and an 83% uplift in website traffic.

Click here to play the Beyond Analysis Twitter game.

A series of cleverly designed interactive infographics lighten the process of discovery, as the quiz steps you through a series of questions that effectively reveal whether you’re involved (obliviously) in evil slave-mongering or not, and how many slaves you have working for you throughout the world! Needless to say, my ownership of an iPhone makes for iShaming results. You’ll be amused by quirky execution of these questions, and surprised by what you learn along the way…try it out!

The problem

Ingresso, a tech business operating in the ticketing industry, needed to develop a web presence, and they needed to develop one quickly. They asked Better Things to help them create a site that would succinctly explain what the company does, what products it offers, and most importantly generate leads and enquiries.

Ingresso needed to be able to edit certain parts of the website.

In terms of branding, Ingresso had a logo, but little else, so Better Things were tasked with building a brand language around the pre-existing logo and applying that language to the corporate website.

The solution

After coming to a thorough understanding of Ingresso’s business and target audience – and with budget in mind – Better Things developed a single page website solution for Ingresso.

The single page format, with jump-to links and multiple contact CTAs, ensured that Ingresso kept the content brief and to-the-point, whilst maximising the opportunity to develop enquiries. In order to get the site up and running on-budget and within a tight timeframe, Better Things built the site on WordPress, limiting CMS control to certain crucial sections of the website.

The result is an easy-to-use website that delivers the crucial information on Ingresso’s services and offerings in a quick and instantly accessible format.

Check out the Ingresso site

The problem

As documented in our case study on the brand identity we created for Highgate Newtown Community Centre (HNCC), the challenge for HNCC was to try to replace the hole in their funding left by local government cuts. They realised that their only hope of doing this was to build awareness of their offering amongst the local community, to deepen engagement with the community and then to turn that engagement and good will into volunteers for the centre. In this way HNCC would be able to continue to offer the outstanding support and services that have made them such a successful centre in the past.

Step one was to create a compelling brand identity. Step two was to build on that identity and create a website that would communicate not only the values and mission of the centre, but also act as a showcase for the services and support available through the centre.

I’m a bit of a regular at Future Human events, and a few weeks ago I attended their session ‘Social Animals’ – exploring how (and if) social networks are changing our personalities. It was an interesting session for a number of reasons, but one of the big take away points for me was around the fragmentation of social media – the idea that a number of factors are beginning to chip away at Facebook’s monopoly of social media, leading to fragmentation of social media into lots of smaller communities and networks.

One of the panel at the event was Alex Halliday, founder and CEO of Social Go, an online service that allows users to create their own, interest focussed, social networks. He talked about the fact that lots of social networkers are not restricting themselves to the big networks – Facebook, Twitter etc – but are turning away from these mass, general sites to more close-knit communities, where users can unite around objects of common interest. Obviously Alex’s business model is built on this idea, so he has an interest in talking it up, but it rang true. With so many people getting their ‘social media training’ on Facebook – and becoming accustomed to social tools and user experience styles through it – it wouldn’t surprise me to discover that users are taking these skills and knowledge and using them elsewhere on the web – elsewheres that perhaps in pre-Facebook days were principally the domain of fanboys and geeks.

Obviously Alex is not the only one to be thinking like this. The inexorable rise of Facebook may have shifted our attention away from community sites, but they are thriving still – look at the Daddy of them all (if you’ll forgive the pun), the all-powerful Mumsnet. And what’s more, community sites are building in more ‘social’ features as championed by Facebook, Twitter and Google+ to make them more useful to users. Other commentators such as Jack Wallington over on Brand Republic’s Wall Blog have talked in more depth on this niche network phenomena.

Another angle to the fragmentation theory is the social network Path which limits each user to 50 followers and cites Dunbar’s number as its rationale for doing so (there is an upper limit to the amount of people that an individual can know personally whilst also knowing how each person relates to one another – and it’s a lot less than the number of Facebook friends most people have). I find this a lot more interesting, as its often cited as a reason that we will never have a truly global society, or true homogenisation – yes we may have the same brands on our high streets, but our cognitive limitations mean that we will never be exactly the same.

Place these two ideas (the rise of nice communities and Dunbar’s number) against a backdrop of stories about Facebook losing users in its most established markets, and some people start putting two and two together and making five.

I think its early days to make any sort of rash forecasts about the demise of Facebook at the hands of smaller communities – there have always been smaller niche communities online, and there always will be – that doesn’t mean people don’t want to talk to their larger ‘friend’ base as well as a group of strangers they are linked to through common interest. I also think Facebook will be remiss if it doesn’t up its niche interest game – after all, from a monetisation perspective, Facebook’s revenue comes squarely from knowing as much about its users as possible to allow for high levels of targeting. But I do think there is something to the Dunbar’s number criticism. I think eventually we start to feel overwhelmed by the numbers, and we either ignore a huge amount of people we’re friends with – only actively responding to and interacting with a relatively small sub-group within our friend lists, go through mass culling exercises, or in some extreme cases drop out of Facebook altogether.

I’d love to generate a bit of discussion around this as I find the way the internet is developing in front of our eyes – and the way it’s so hard to predict – fascinating. So let us know your thoughts and leave a comment below!

The Colour Scheme Designer makes choosing a colour much less of a mission, especially when you need to move quickly! Have a click around this clever kit, and if you’re a colour nerd like me, this site will give you heart palpitations.

The problem

Highgate Newtown Community Centre (HNCC) had a problem. After years spent successfully providing support and services for the community, they were facing big cuts to their funding from their local authority. They knew that they needed to adjust quickly to the new political reality, and the new funding landscape ahead of them. So they took the decision to develop a brand – something they had never previously had – in order to help them engage more than ever before with their local community.

The challenge for Better Things was to develop a brand identity that would help HNCC build on their existing profile in the local community. The identity would need to continue to reflect the centre’s reputation in the local area for providing affordable and relevant community services and support – resonating with, and not alienating, the centre’s existing user base. But more importantly, the identity needed to lend HNCC the authority it needed to attract volunteers – volunteers that would be the centre’s lifeblood after the funding cuts – and recruit new users from across the incredibly diverse spectrum of the local community.

The upshot of this recruitment of volunteers and new users would be a community centre genuinely at the heart of its community; and a community with a real sense of ownership over their centre.