Last week we asked “Is Responsive Web Design Right for Retailers?” and you responded. Our interview with Steve Reighgut, Fluid’s Director of Engineering, struck a cord with readers and retailers. Right on.

So we continue the RWD conversation with Abigail Hart Gray, Fluid’s V.P. of User Experience. Fluid’s UX team is at the forefront of designing in digital to meet and exceed consumer needs. RWD gives them a new palette with which to play.

My top three take-aways:

1. In-the-moment needs matter: Decisions about RWD should come down to whether customers have expectations of your brand that differ by device.

2. RWD is mobile’s best friend: In Abigail’s words, “Mobile is the final frontier of shit usability. RWD is a panacea for this almost universal issue.” (Seriously why would I say that any differently?)

3. RWD can increase mobile conversion rates: The notion that consumers aren’t willing to convert on mobile is outdated. It’s blaming users for a usability issue – that RWD can help solve.

Now on to the interview…

[Amy] What is Responsive Web Design?

[Abigail] In its most pure definition it is a device agnostic way to manage your website with a single code base that works across any screen resolution.

RWD detects device resolution and then adjusts content layout and interactive feature differences based on the screen real estate of the device being accessed.

[Amy] What’s the best thing about it?

[Abigail] RWD requires much less maintenance cost and ensures device appropriate experiences without having to worry about adjusting for new devices that hit the market – which we know happens every day. The experience is always going to look good.

[Amy] What’s the biggest challenge of RWD?
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Responsive Web Design (RWD). The digital industry is buzzing about it. Our clients are asking whether to invest in it. And Fluid is at the forefront of it.

In order to get you answers I sat down with Steve Reichgut, Fluid’s Director of Engineering. He is a respected industry leader in RWD. Steve and his team live and breathe cutting-edge technology. They’re smart about when to, and when not to, apply it.

My top three take-aways:

1. This isn’t just about technology: Responsive Web Design with a “Big R” is about ensuring that the user experience responds effectively on multiple devices in multiple contexts. This broader concept can be implemented in many different ways.

2. RWD is not an all or nothing decision: The question ‘Should I use Responsive Web Design or not?’ is probably the wrong question to be asking.

3. Thinking through support for RWD is essential: Content updating challenges that currently exist between marketing and tech teams get amplified with RWD. Trade-offs between cutting-edge and desire for control are inevitable.

Now on to the interview…

[Amy] What is Responsive Web Design?

[Steve] In it’s purest definition, the “Big R” RWD, is about ensuring that what the user is experiencing responds effectively on the device they are using in whatever context they are in. This can be achieved in a lot of different ways.

RWD though is usually used as a technical term. It is literally using three things to build a responsive experience: a grid system, media queries to determine viewport size and flexible images that size appropriately.

[Amy] What’s the best thing about RWD?

[Steve] The best thing is the whole idea that the user gets an optimal experience no matter where they are coming from. RWD gives the user a great, seamless experience.

[Amy] What’s the biggest challenge?

[Steve] Determining how it’s going to be supported operationally. RWD doesn’t create new problems, it amplifies the ones you already have. Who’s going to make changes? And who’s going to make sure the changes render right on all devices?

The other challenge is that people are combining the “Big R” definition of RWD with a specific technical solution. So they end up asking “Do I do RWD or not?”

[Amy] Is “Do I do RWD or not?” the wrong question to be asking?
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The 2013 Tony Award nominees were announced today and it got me thinking about how much technology, people and shopping have evolved over the last 17 years. If Broadway theatre, technology and shopping seem like wildly unrelated topics, allow me to explain.

Back in 1996, I was the founding editor of the Tony Awards website, a joint venture between the organizations that run the Tonys and a startup Web development company. Because the Web was so new and unfamiliar, the folks running the awards (and everyone else on Broadway!) didn’t understand or appreciate the value of another communications platform. They tolerated our online efforts, but were strident about us not scooping the traditional press, even though we were an extension of the official brand.

On this morning 17 years ago, after the nominees were announced at Sardi’s, I was handed a print-out and CD-rom with the full list of nominees, straight-armed my way past the donut table to the subway, and hurried back to the office so we could post the full list on the site. As if this delay wasn’t bad enough, I came back to an email from the talented actor Mark Linn-Baker wanting to know why the Tonys couldn’t get our act together enough to post the nominees at the same time as the television announcement.

“What do you want me to say?” I considered replying. Instead I wrote back to tell him the nominees were finally up on the site. And that I’m a big fan of his work.

“Success requires agility, adapting to evolving human behavior, meeting your customers where they are, not forcing them to meet you where you are.”

Flash forward light years to this morning, when I turned on the TV just as the announcement was ending.

I sparked up the Tony Awards site on my iPad to read the full list.

An alert pinged on my iPhone from the New York Times with more information about the awards.

Facebook started lighting up.

I texted a good friend to congratulate her for receiving a nomination for her performance in a play.

I even started shoping for an appropriate congratulations gift on Amazon.

The changes in technology between then and now are obvious—smartphones, tablets and social media weren’t even glimmers in their creators’ eyes back then—but the changes in people (especially the ones responsible for brands) and shopping are especially noteworthy.

Organizations like the Tony Awards, not to mention retailers, financial institutions, healthcare providers, etc., have learned that they are content creators just like the media that they courted so assiduously for so many decades.  And, as content creators, it’s not enough to be present in just one platform.  To succeed in today’s environment brands—particularly retailers—need to be present where their customer lives—everywhere, immediately and always.  It’s the Omnichannel Evolution.

After 17 years in this industry, I understand firsthand how challenging it is to keep up with technology and shifts in human behavior. But I also understand the cost of not evolving and innovating.  Probably the most important lesson I’ve learned as a digital strategist is that there is no “one size fits all” solution to getting from here to there.  Success requires agility, adapting to evolving human behavior, meeting your customers where they are, not forcing them to meet you where you are.

That’s why I’m proud to be part of the Fluid team. My colleagues are experts in understanding what makes individual brands unique, what their customers want most from them, and leading the brands through the Omnichannel Evolution, be it through e-commerce, in-store tablets with endless aisles, shoppable images, or strategic planning.

Still, I envy the person who’s running the Tony Awards website today.  He or she probably had plenty of time to enjoy that donut table and didn’t come back to any angry emails from famous people. And he didn’t have to wander from store to store to find just the right gift that says, “Congratulations on your nomination!”

Facebook Home has launched. And it’s been in the marketplace long enough for opinions to be formed. My Tweet-like summary?

Status update: Facebook Home / Phone is more marketing campaign than product innovation. #homesortasweethome

How I described it to my mom: “Facebook Home is a screensaver for your phone that showcases Facebook activity.” I was feeling quite proud of this analogy until I realized that it’s a widely used description.

The exception to this is chat heads – which allow your live chat to carry across the mobile experience. This benefit is comparable to being able to talk on the phone and surf the web at the same time. It makes the user experience seamless instead of siloed. Yay.

The #1 thing Facebook Home has in common with digital commerce?
It achieves the goal of removing a click. It literally brings Facebook one layer up in the user hierarchy. And in the process trumps all other apps.

As anyone involved in digital commerce knows, this is a big deal. A bigger deal if adoption is large (or even a small percentage of Facebook’s users).

That said, I’m not sold that Facebook Home is a big deal. Interesting? Yes. Here are five reasons why…

1. Facebook Phone is not Facebook’s phone:
The phone is an Android. Facebook is usurping Google’s OS and user interface. Okay a different way to put it – Facebook is utilizing Google’s open source operating system. What makes it the Facebook Phone? It’s being marketed as such via Facebook and AT&T. And Facebook becomes the default experience on the Android. This could never happen on the iPhone because Apple’s OS is locked down.

Mark my words: Wherever Steve Jobs is – he is laughing.

At the end of the day, if open source thrives, Google will be laughing too. Who gets the last laugh remains to be seen.

2. There’s no bouncer at the open source door
Google got an unexpected partnership with this product. In fact, Google may not have even known about Facebook’s plans. Eric Schmidt has expressed that Facebook Home is a good thing. It definitely reinforces Google’s open position (and by default, Apple’s closed position). But if I’m on the Google brand team I’m thinking through the implications. If I’m on the Google+ team the gauntlet has been thrown.

Don’t get me wrong I love open source (and um also my iPhone). Open vs. closed is the creativity of a crowd of developers vs. controlled one-source creativity. It’s a dreamy head-to-head. (Although Google and Apple may actually be fighting different fights altogether.)

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Will Your Site Withstand the Onslaught of Holiday Shoppers on iPads?

It’s likely over the past 12 months you’ve seen an increase in traffic to your site from iPads. If you’re lucky, you’ve also seen a corresponding increase in revenue driven from iPads. With the holidays right around the corner (you’ve started holiday planning, right?) and no shortage of growth in the iPad user arena, it’s critical your site be ready to deliver on customer expectations when they shop (and purchase) from their iPads this holiday season.

We know that customer behavior and purchase tendencies are different on tablets than from standard browsers and also from smartphones and those behaviors are starting to drive a serious divergence in customer expectations as they traverse your site across their various devices. As far as tablets go, customers expect a richer, more immersive, and, well FUN experience relative to their standard browsing and smartphone usage and that demands a different design approach to meet customer expectations. Simply delivering the standard browser experience to your iPad visitors will not differentiate your brand in the emerging ‘tablet-first’ design space. Customer expect more and if you can capitalize on that expectation, it’s likely you’ll also capture your visitors’ dollars.

Surprisingly, the majority of Internet Retailer Top 500 sites not only haven’t starting delivering tablet-specific experiences to deliver on customer expectations, but a wide swath of them deliver sites to the iPad that have serious usability issues. Issues that aren’t problems for the standard browser, but can present serious barriers and frustrations to visitors on iPads.

Assuming there’s no time at this point for a tablet-specific design for your brand’s site, I’ve created a list of common usability issues seen when standard experiences are delivered to iPads, as well as some hints on how to avoid them. Take a look and see any of these issues plague your site, and fix them pre-holiday. Then, start planning for next year!
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An article was recently published claiming “Marketers Find Less than Half of Analytics Useful for Decision-Making!”   In full disclosure, I added the exclamation mark to the headline because I felt like the tone of the article implied a minor hysteria over the implication that ‘less than half’ was a staggering figure.  In fact the article caught my eye because that seemed to be a higher percentage than I’ve witnessed. Not because companies don’t understand the potential power of analytics but because “analytics” often simply becomes “data collection” which in and of itself, is not useful to anyone really.

Let me back up.  I’m a big believer in Avinash Kaushik’s “So What?” analytics philosophy that says if you can’t answer what action or recommendation could result by tracking a certain metric after asking ‘So what?” three times, you shouldn’t bother tracking it. It’s a great philosophy and in theory any organization subscribing to this philosophy should be running a lean, mean analytics discipline.  In practice however, most companies don’t ask “So What?” or even “Why?”.   Instead they are swimming in a sea of data with the end result being analysis paralysis.

Sometimes this is self-inflicted (tag everything and review hourly!) but in most cases they’ve companies implement an analytics package and now that data is being collected, they just don’t know what to look at or care about. So they end up doing nothing.  As a colleague once put it “Your web analytics tool is the best tool you’ve already paid for but aren’t using.”

Here at Fluid we’ve recently overhauled our Analytics practice within our Strategy group to make sure even our approach to data is user-centric.  Why?  Simple.  We want to help our clients:

• Achieve a deeper understanding of customer behavior and motivations
• Answer the “why” behind the “what”
• Make quantitatively as well as qualitatively informed design decisions
• Work within a clear framework for measuring success and proving ROI
• Get past analysis paralysis and turn mountains of data and isolated metrics into insights and actions

As digital design and user experience experts, we have the talent, knowledge and expertise to help our clients get beyond the “what” of their data and get to the “why” and “So What?”   Sounds great, right?

If what you’ve read so far is resonating, you know that it’s not always as easy as it sounds.

When we start working with clients on an analytics strategy we focus on a few key things.  If you are at a place in your organization where you’re ready to re-evaluate your analytics strategy, focusing on the following could help you get started.

1. Forget about current data, infrastructure, platform, etc.  What are the primary goals of your digital initiative whether it be web, mobile, social?

When answering this question don’t think about metrics.  Think about answering as a narrative. For example, “We want customers to learn more about our company.”  or “We want more people reading our blog.”  or “We want to increase revenue coming from our website.”

2. What are your current benchmarks?

It’s okay if you don’t know.  This may be a rhetorical question that turns into a ‘to-do’ once #1 is answered. In some cases we find out the benchmarks are completely arbitrary – in other words, not benchmarks at all but pipe dreams.  We don’t want to be set up for failure so establishing real benchmarks from which to set goals in imperative.  In other cases we find the benchmarks have nothing to do with the articulated goals and they need to align in order to really measure success.

3.  Who cares about this information?

We try and be realistic when we answer this question by framing it as not only “who cares” but “who can authorize the action?”   It is difficult and frustrating to put together a fantastic analytics strategy and have wonderful, actionable insights, only to realize the people who need to authorize budget for changes as outcomes of the data findings were never part of the fantastic analytics discussions.  Answering this question can help you make sure the right stakeholders are involved in the analytics strategy.  It also helps you, as the analytics “guy” or “gal” keep focused on the the bigger organizational goals and objectives.  It’s all too easy to get so excited or so deep into the data you become one of those “tag it all!” people so by leading up a focused practice, it will be easy for you to build a solid business case for change with the decision makers when you’re able to tie clear KPI trends to articulated business goals and objectives AND those decision makers helped formulate the KPIs.

Once you establish the groundwork by answering the questions above you can get more specific; feature ROI, custom reports and dashboards, real time data analysis, multi-channel funnel reports, conversion optimization, interval reporting and automation, etc.  All that good stuff that really helps you get a deeper understanding of your customers and their behaviors and issues with the experience and start formulating a story around your customer’s journey.

Just make sure you are always answering “So What?” when you enter into discussions around tagging X,Y or Z to track A,B or C.

Footnote:
If you are a Google Analytics user, check out Avinash’s blog.  There are always interesting discussions about web analytics and some good Q&A.  Justin Cutroni’s blog is another good resource for you.  He’s currently an “Analytics Advocate” at Google.  His stuff tends to be a lot more tactical and has great report templates you can add to your GA dashboards.

Visual has snuck up on verbal and become the new darling of digital. What do I mean? Digital shopping, design and communication are now ruled by vivid imagery that aims to stop consumers in their tracks. This is a window shopping world of show and tell. Sharing becomes irresistible. Making a statement can happen without words.

What’s driving this trend? At Fluid we see four main factors:

1. Mobile (and tablet) first design: Mobile is no longer the second thought to web design. The minimalism and functionality needed to make mobile sing is where designers are starting. Strong mobile growth projections and the shift in consumer behavior towards mobile access are fueling this fire. Just ask Facebook and eBay. Responsive design fits into this niche nicely.

2. Facebook timeline: In January 2012 Sophos conducted a poll that found that 51.29% of respondents said Facebook Timeline worried them (32.36% said they didn’t know why they were still on Facebook). With the roll out completed these numbers have likely changed. 900M active users now see their history of interactions visually.

3. Pinterest: In February ComScore reported that Pinterest passed 10M monthly uniques faster than any stand alone site ever. In March Pinterest served up 2.3B page impressions to 4M unique visitors. That’s 4000%+ growth YOY. Pinterest serves as such a strong source of referral traffic that two things are happening: Digital commerce sites are proactively pinning on Pinterest and Digital commerce sites are adapting their site photography to make pinning to Pinterest easy (and appealing). At Fluid we think infinite scroll is Pinterest’s secret sauce.

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When people step outside their immediate comfort zone, amazing things can happen.

We witness it when football players take ballet. We see it when a furniture designer looks to nature for inspiration. We hear it when Tony Bennett teams up with Lady Gaga.

Unfortunately, we don’t witness this in the digital world enough. Instead of being open to a range of influences, site design processes often have a narrow focus that can result in  “me too” looks rather than differentiated designs.

How does this happen?

As part of the discovery process, companies typically limit their review of the digital landscape to direct competitors and “top sites.”  This practice is important for benchmarking and informing feature prioritization. But done alone, a competitive review can be limiting and inadvertently create a “keeping up with the joneses” effect rather than setting the stage for a differentiated experience.

How can you avoid this pitfall and create a more differentiated experience?

By expanding your circle of influence. By supplementing competitive reviews with brand spheres.

What Is A Brand Sphere?

A brand sphere is a map of your customers’  “go to” brands across verticals. It identifies the brands they choose as they go about their day and the brands you can find in their home.

What is in their refrigerator? Which labels do they wear? What car do they drive? What kind of phone do they have? Where do they eat out? Which gym do they belong to? Which hair and body care brands do they prefer?

A brand sphere draws a more complete picture of your customer. It illuminates their preferences and expectations. And it provides new fodder for inspiration.

For example, if you are designing a consumer electronics shopping site, why limit your influences to only other electronics sites or even ecommerce sites in general? Why not look at music and video sites where your consumers most likely spend more time? Why not look at the CPG sites that fall in their brand sphere? What can you learn from the news sites they visit? The social networks they use?

By looking across verticals, you will expose yourself to different design approaches and feature sets. The purpose is not to imitate these approaches but to take a step back and see if there are any distinct designs or features that spark an idea.

Undoubtedly new perspectives will fuel new ideas. Ideas that are as elegant and powerful as a football player who can both rush and plié.

I had the pleasure of attending the Adobe MAX 2011 conference in Los Angeles this year as a featured speaker, and Fluid was selected to appear in the keynote address for our work crafting customer experiences for multiple devices across channels, from web to kiosks to mobile phones and tablets.

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While the extraordinary growth of touch tablets and smart phones has been a boon for consumers, it’s restarted something akin to the browser wars of the late 90’s for retailers. Instead of being able to rely on most consumers browsing the web using a mouse, using one of a handful of major browsers and running a fairly new version of Flash, the playing field is now wide open. Touch navigation vs. point-and-click and Flash video vs. HTML5 are just a couple of examples. With the launch of the Amazon Kindle Fire this week, retailers have yet another device and proprietary browser, Amazon Silk, to add to the list.

Our mission for Fluid Experience has always been to make online shopping more engaging while decreasing production effort. With this in mind, we’re pleased to announce enhancements that optimize product and brand imagery presentation, regardless of the device. We accomplish this using a number of methods:

Product Displays - Our interactive product displays (zoom, color changes, views, etc.) now perform browser detection and serve up a Flash-based presentation if available. If not, we assume the user is on a touch-based tablet or smart phone and serve up an HTML presentation specifically optimized for touch navigation. For zoom, instead of forcing click-and-pan or mouse-over zoom gestures on the user, we rely on native pinch-to-zoom gestures that they already know. Plus, we do some special work behind the scenes to ensure the image stays crisp, even at multiple levels of zoom.

Shoppable Imagery – For adding interactivity to brand-based imagery, we’ve built a completely new, HTML-based component from the ground up. And don’t worry — ditching Flash doesn’t mean a loss in richness or interactivity. Our new Shoppable Image component allows for graceful crossfade and scrolling transitions. Hotspots and tooltips can contain and mix images and text. Rich fonts work out-of-the-box courtesy of Typekit. Fonts.com support is available as well.

Shoppable Video – Our Shoppable Video component detects user’s system in a similar way to Product Displays and serves up either a Flash or HTML-based presentation as appropriate.

And this is just the beginning: we see huge potential in how tablets and smart phones can really elevate the shopping experience and intend to continue to further optimize our components going into 2012. What’s more, we’ve expanded browser support so retailers can continue to upload an image once and rest assured that Fluid Experience will keep pace with the proliferation of new devices. Now and in the future.