Microsite vs. Primary Web Site vs. E-Commerce Site

When people refer to a "web site" they often mean different things. I thought it might be helpful to clarify some terms.

Microsite: This term is usually used to describe web sites made up of a small group of pages created for a specific purpose. They are often built to support ad campaigns, launch new products or have some other specific, limited purpose. There are some advantages to creating a microsite instead of adding new pages to an existing web site. One advantage is the reduced cost of search engine marketing. Because a microsite can carry content solely related to its purpose, ads are given better quality scores and clicks can be purchased at lower cost. Another advantage is flexibility in user requirements. Because of the limited purpose of these sites, they are great places to utilize animation, video and interactivity such as gaming. Your users will not be returning to this site on a regular basis like they would a primary web site or e-commerce site so more interactivity and richer content can really work well here to support your brand.

Primary web site: This term usually refers to a company's main web site. It is a place to store corporate information such as management team bios, career opportunities and maps to offices. If the company is public, this would be the place to show stock price, press releases and SEC filings. Sometimes a primary web site can house product or service information. This is especially true with B2B companies or companies that don't wish to draw a distinction between the company brand and individual product/service brands.

E-Commerce web site: This term refers to a web site whose sole purpose is to sell products or services. There are well-known best practices to optimize these sites to increase conversions and following these best-practices can substantially increase sales.

Those are just three of the most commonly used terms. Other terms such as blog, wiki and even Facebook page can be interchanged with the term web site, but the ones mentioned above seem to be the most common.

Atemporality Revisited

Recently I've been thinking about Bruce Sterling's 2010 TED Conference speech, "Atemporality for the Creative Artist." I like how he defines the idea of atemporality, but I think other examples may illustrate his point better. Many of his examples, especially those related to social media, do a great job showing how we've managed to create a world outside of space, but I think there are other ideas and products in the market right now, that will eventually help us create a world outside of time.

Take, for example, the growing ubiquity of devices like the iPad and iPhone. These devices have the potential to be always on and always recording. Couple that with the growing number of surveillance cameras everyone is subjected to, satellite images, mapping projects, geo-coded photos and tweets, etc... and you have entire portions of the world in which a substantial portion of the visual and mental landscape is recorded.

If these trends continue, and the cost to archive this content continues to decline, then without much difficulty you can imagine a future in which you can dial back time as easily as you can change the aperture on your camera.

For example, let's say I am sitting in my office on a beautiful sunny day in 2050. I hold up my future reality recording/augmentation device (or simply adjust the setting on my digital glasses) and dial back time 5 years. I can easily see this same office in 2045, the people that are here, the way the furniture is arranged, what people on the street and in the press are talking about. Enough adjacent content will exist that unrecorded objects can be extrapolated and rendered automatically.

Now, I've abolished at least a part of the concept of time and definitely changed the nature of history. I am well on my way to an atemporal world.

FourSquare: The Rise of Location-Based Social Networking Applications

For those of you who haven't heard, FourSquare is one of many emerging location-aware social networking applications. And like most social networking applications, FourSquare is a great tool to support and encourage the creation of communities around your brand.

While the growth of FourSquare has been rapid, the application still has a relatively limited reach compared to other social apps and the final marketing model is still being worked out. In the meantime, if you want to use FourSquare to reach customers, it is best to refrain from using the platform to aggressively advertise and instead tie promotions to community activity. This model has worked well with other social media platforms and it's likely that FourSquare will continue to follow this trend.

Here are a couple of ways to tie FourSquare promotions to community activity:

1. Create promotions that reward customer loyalty. This can be done by providing discounts for frequent visits or when customers bring in friends as new customers. In FourSquare, the person who visits your location the most times becomes that location's "mayor." Loyalty could also be rewarded by providing recognition of your mayors on your primary web site.

2. Create promotions that leverage the gaming aspect of FourSquare. FourSquare lets users gain points and unlock badges through the use of the service. Bravo Television and Intel have both created custom badges within FourSquare that users can gain through interacting with the brands. Creating similar custom badges is another way that FourSquare could be leveraged to support your own unique communities.

FourSquare is like other social media platforms, but with the added dimension of location. This gives rise to several exciting opportunities to engage your customers. In addition, with the growing ubiquity of GPS-enabled smart phones, the rise of apps like FourSquare that leverage user location will also continue to grow.

What will you do with your new iPad?

Customer research is a core part of the Method Engine process, so while we waited in line for the release of the new iPad, we took advantage of the time to ask other pad people what they planed to do with their new purchase.