The team at Wright Strategies is excited to have won the award for “Best Shopping Website” from the 2011 WebAward Competition for the KEEN Footwear website!  The Web Marketing Association holds this annual competition to recognize outstanding achievement in web development.

The websites entered in the competition were judged on design, innovation, content, technology, interactivity, copywriting and ease of use.  Our submission scored well above industry average for all criteria leading to the overall win.  The judges even said,  “Wow.  A fantastic combination of visually stunning graphics that are married well to great content. And that all leads the user to the shopping cart. Really well done.”

KEEN’s website features both enticing visuals and an easy-to-use interface for customers.  The Recess Revolution section encourages site visitors to get out and experience nature in their daily lives.  Photos can be uploaded for a chance to win free KEENs and various downloads are available to add a playful touch to an outdoor enthusiast’s next adventures.  Customers are also able to “try on” some of their favorite KEEN sandals with jeans or a variety of socks to find the perfect combination.

A few days after our first bit of good news, we found out the KEEN site had also been named “Best in Industry” for ecommerce. 

We’re excited to receive this recognition for both Wright Strategies and KEEN.  Our team looks forward to continuing to bring style and innovation into our web development projects for KEEN.

As we mentioned before, KEEN is bringing Recess back and giving customers all the tools they need to take a break of their own on the KEEN website.

The KEEN community has embraced the Recess Revolution, so we helped give them even more ways to interact and share their recess.  The Recess Photo Pledges let you step into a virtual photobooth and upload a photo of yourself taking a break and tell the rest of the community how you spent your latest recess.  We also stream in photos taken at various KEEN events of people sharing their pledges.

So far, people have pledged to climb more mountains, go on more hikes, spend more time with family and even to meet more sea lions!  Check out these fun and creative pledges and make one of your own.

The Recess Pledge has encouraged the KEEN community around the world to "step back from the screen" and "leap off laundry mountain."  But we thought, wouldn't it be fun to see what others are taking a Recess from?  We created the Call to Recess so you can create your very own pledge!  And let's just say, people have been thinking outside the box...

"We can step back from the grind."

"We can leap off deadline mountain."

And instead of "A bell inside your head that's ringing." one extra fun person talked about "A peacock inside your head that's writing."

One thing is for sure, the KEEN community is one creative bunch and their Calls to Recess and Photo Pledges have proved that for sure.  So what are you waiting for?  Make a pledge of your own!

Favorite Ice Cream Flavor: Butter Pecan

Currently Listening to: Foster the People, Dawes, Deer Tick, The Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash, Skip James, Simon & Garfunkel and Mumford and Sons

Best Local Restaurant: The Good Knight

Starbucks Order: Whatever Mamma Jessica Gets ;) (not a frequent coffee drinker…despite  Rebekah’s attempts)

Can’t Miss TV Show: The Office and Modern Family

Guilty Pleasure TV Show or Movie: True Blood

Currently Reading: Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

Hidden Talent:  To some this is a talent, to me this is a health hazard, but I can pretty much pop every bone in my body.

And another interesting fact...Lauren and Shane just got engaged a few days ago!  So wish this cute, happy couple a big congratulations.

KEEN recently launched a new campaign encouraging their customers to take a 15 minute Recess from their busy life and go outside and play.  In order for their user-friendly website to fit the new marketing message, we helped with a redesign.  Take a look!

You'll see we really made the focus of the site the fun, new lifestyle images provided by North.  Because the campaign uses bright, bold colors, we knew we needed to add a little spice to the website. 

Make sure to check out the Recess Toolkit which includes a doorhanger, a few hall passes, a screensaver and a pledge to take Recess back!  And we've definitely been taking advantage around our office.

We love the new direction and design of the website, but the BEST news for KEEN customers is the site is just as easy to navigate and make a purchase as it was before we spruced it up.

Have you had a recess worth talking about?  Share it on the KEEN Fan Photos page!

Favorite Ice Cream Flavor: Coffee

Currently Listening to: Musiq Soulchild and Craig David

Best Local Restaurant: Portland City Grill.  I have a thing for their NY Steaks!

Starbucks Order: Venti Decaf, 2 pump, no whip mocha

Can’t Miss TV Show:  Fringe

Guilty Pleasure TV Show or Movie: Days of Thunder or The Postman

Currently Reading: Domain Driven Design: Tackling Complexities in the Heart of Software by Eric Evans and Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns by Jimmy Nilsson.

Hidden Talent: I’m pretty damn funny, yet nobody else seems to have figured it out.

Real-time Marketing Strategy

One of the first presentations I found interesting was on Real-time Marketing Strategy. It said being good at marketing now doesn’t mean you need a big, concrete plan. Instead, companies need to have a playbook filled options of things to do. You can then adapt to any set of criteria instead of doing only a few specific things.

We learned we need to produce content at lightning speed and be completely nimble about getting it out there in all the different mediums. Of all the communication channels, email is STILL the most important and valuable wayto share information. Facebook is second and Twitter third.

Business Startups

Another session was on startups and it gave some valuable advice. The main message was to find a way to keep momentum, and always have something new and exciting to say, even if it’s small.  They said to isolate the minimum viable product and go to market with that; nobody ever became big by being comprehensive.

Figure out what it is people want, and create a story around that.  It will make it so much easier for customers and press to understand. The absolute highest priority should be customer
acquisition.  Find a way to get people passionate about your product and to build a community around it.

Metrics-Driven Design

Still another session focused on metrics-driven design. It talked about how the most important thing to measure is daily active users, followed by time on site and frequency. What is considered least important may surprise you since it used to be considered most important, and that is page views and visits.

It’s all about engagement, not just number of people looking at your site. Conversion isn’t just visitors to purchasers, but also tryers to buyers (if you have a product that will allow a trial).

Guy Kawasaki

And of course a fan favorite, Guy Kawasaki, did a great presentation on Enchantment: Becoming likeable and trustworthy.  While some of his pointers could be considered common-sense, like smiling and perfecting your handshake, others really gave us something to think about.  Our hope is to continue to show our customers that we are trustworthy and provide work above and beyond what they expect.

Contrary to this little guy's blue appearance, that was one tasty cake.  Half vanilla and half chocolate.  Don't mind if I do!

Chris even made a surprise appearance at our impromptue awards ceremony.  And a big congratulations to Jessica for winning the 2008 March Madness bracket challenge.  Your prize is DEFINITELY worth the wait.

Lauren enjoying her watermelon cookie.  Yum!

I don't care how smart this concept may be, this is so NOT okay.

Spotted:  Jeff Jarvis (Creator of Entertainment Weekly)

Doesn't this look so fun?!  Wish you were here.

Notes from Guy Kawaski's presentation.

Nothing beats a Saturday afternoon at Iron Cactus on 6th street.

Justin's favorite part of SXSW: party at the HP Mobile Park.

Everybody loves Chomp the Hipmunk. 

Flash Content vs the iPhone

With HTML 5 on the horizon, we were surprised to learn in an informal poll in a panel entitled “Flash is Dead! Long Live Flash!” that 90% of the attendees “like Flash” compared to only 10% in the audience who “hated Flash.” Although mobile devices are driving developers to strip out multimedia content, the satisfaction people get from a rich media experience isn’t going anywhere, and, if anything, we as developers have to gear ourselves toward developing targeted content for each platform.


Gaming is Healthy

World-renown author Jane McGonigal had some impressive stats that seemed to fly in the face of everything we think as developers, and even more so as parents: Playing video games is healthy! According to McGonigal, extensive studies show that people actually become more creative, more collaborative and more helpful to your own community when they play up to 28 hours of games per week! Of course, the caveats to this statistic are that you:

a) aren’t mean to other players within the games you play
b) don’t play with others who are mean
c) don’t play MORE than 28 hours per week.


Worst. Website. Ever.

In the most entertaining panel, we heard all about a made-up company that is building “apps” for the Brother Intellifax 2800. Mike Lacher entertained the crowd with a fake pitch to a venture capitalist for this incredibly stupid website idea. Our favorite quote from the presentation: “Get out your jean jackets, and prepare to be-dazzled!"


Critical Thinking About User Experience

We enjoyed a small activity in a panel this year that asked us to role-play answer questions of users as if we were a browser and a user was trying to use us to navigate a website. Each time the user encountered an error, we had to say out loud what the problem was, without offering any explanation if none was provided in the real online user experience. On the flip side, we learned that is was really hard to hold our tongues when users WERE doing the right things, like filling out forms correctly, etc. and it got us thinking about how we could do a better, more friendly job of providing friendly feedback to our customers for just about every interaction.


Which is Better When in Austin? BBQ or Mexican?

This year, we tried our best to settle the debate but the water remained muddy after a sunshiny visit to Rudy’s BBQ was one of the best team lunches we’ve ever had, and a Mexican dinner at Polvo’s delivered some of the most amazing fish fajitas we’ve ever tasted. Tough call. We’re pretty sure we’ll have to return to both just to be sure there isn’t a clear winner!

 
SXSW Attendance

We’re pretty sure attendance records were smashed this year. We’ve been attending for the past 5 or 6 years, and have seen the conference grow dramatically each and every year. This was no exception. Instead of running into many of the same people we’ve seen every year, we mostly met lots of new and interesting people with some great stories to tell. And maybe, just maybe next year, we’ll fork out the extra few bucks to keep Jeremy in town through the music portion of the conference! (It’s getting harder every year to be the “nerds” standing at the ticketing window at the airport on our way out, watching all the “rock stars” come in!)

iPad Design Headaches

In this session we discussed the widespread use of tablets such as the iPad and how we’re just now finding out how people are using them as they are becoming more mainstream and in the hands of “normal” users, not just early adopters. We discussed how designers, when faced with designing for this platform, have areas in which they have difficulty. Such as:

• Trying to use EVERY pixel of space instead of balancing their design with whitespace.
• Making their design too complex and overwhelming – The idea is to feature the content, not the design.
• Getting away from design metaphors.   For example: If the design looks like the page of a book, it needs to turn like the page of the book; if it doesn’t, change the wait it looks.
• Squishing content into tiny boxes called "Popovers".  If you can use the full screen, use it.
• Making buttons too small which require the user to concentrate on where to click and not on consuming the content.

Inclusive Design and Accessibility

In this session we talked about how you need to plan, execute and follow up on the design of a website to make it accessible for as many people as possibly. Websites need to be beautiful, but also give an end meaning to all users. Here are some things that all sites should be:

• Welcoming and not discriminative
• Flexible and give users options
• Simple, intuitive, and clear
• Informative, timely and descriptive
• Instructional and provide help
• Tolerant and supportive

Secrets of Mobile Applications

In this session we learned about how mobile is becoming the battleground of this decade. People look at their phones over 150 times a day!  The competition to create apps and games for mobile devices will become more and more intense. The emergence of mobile came about because consumers value one thing the most: time.   Mobile is also about providing users with a unique experience. It’s interesting to think about how some people will steal music, but pay $200 concert tickets for the experience it provides.

Metrics Driven Design

In this session, we learned about how design can be driven by site metrics. Designers often struggle with metrics because design isn’t a logic problem that can be solved by data. Designers often say “trusting your gut” rather than using data can encourage the best design.  We discussed the “41 shades of blue” test where Google, over the course of several weeks, testied 41 different shades of link colors to determine which one a majority of users preferred. Several benefits of metrics include:

• Measure the effectiveness of your site using simple numbers
• Reduce arguments based on opinion and design choices become testable
• Give you answers about what really works through testing
• Show where you’re strong (and weak) as a designer
• Clients LOVE metrics – you can show clients which design is effective not just the one you like best

If metrics are going to be useful you have to use the information you glean and make design designed decisions based on them.

This was my first chance to attend South by Southwest Interactive and I must say, I was NOT disappointed.

One of the highlights of the week for me was learning about the Unwritten Rules of Social Media.  The main point of this session was to discuss the differences between the rules that govern our social interactions in every day life and those should be translated online.  

As a company, it is important to "pull back the curtain" and let your audience see who you really are and what you're all about.  The fact is, an organization is a collection of individuals who bring unique things to the table and customers should get to see that.

My hope is that when you read our social media, you get a taste of the personality of Wright Strategies.  Because trust me, we have a lot!

Another standout for me was listening to the keynote speaker Blake Mycoskie, the founder of Toms Shoes.  His focus on incoporating social responsibility in the work place really struck a chord with our team.

He made the point that having your team believe they are making an impact for the greater good can go a long way in morale and marketing.

I can't wait to get a chance to check out even more of SXSWi in Spring 2012!