It’s usually design, user experience and high tech breakthroughs that take the cake as hot topics at SXSWi. This year, I was surprised (and delighted) to notice a content revolution taking place. The push? Treat content as a living, changing element of your website and your company’s overall online presence.

When we talk content, we’re not just referring to text on a page. Everything from the error messages that pop up on the site to video/audio clips fit under the content umbrella. Each piece of content should work together with the design and other site elements to enhance the user’s experience and engagement with your brand.

This sounds like a big task, and it is, but it’s doable. It all starts with content strategy. It may entail auditing the current content on your website and working from there to improve your cohesive messaging throughout the site.

The Content Strategy Plan:

Audit. Look at your website, Twitter, Facebook, microsites, etc. Check for relevancy and consistency. Anything redundant, outdated or trivial goes.

Ask. Why do you have this content? Who is it for? Who’s writing it? How often does it get updated?

Analyze. Take a look at your current content and determine what you need to create.

Align. Content does evolve. Create a plan for its life cycle, and involve the appropriate parties.

Assume responsibility. You are a publisher. Take responsibility for your content.

Interested in brainstorming ways that a content strategy plan or editorial calendar could enhance your brand online? Let us know!

1. If you do not let users add content to your site (photos, videos, links, reviews, etc.), then you need to make that your primary goal for 2010.

2. Scanning barcodes with your smart phone for more information, pictures and videos is a trend  we need to all pay attention to. (Check out QMCodes.com and StickyBits.com.) 

3. Content is king! Engage your customers with rich copy & images that are updated often to keep them coming back for more.  

4. Traditional outbound marketing (print ads and mailers) is going the way of the dinosaur. The future is inbound marketing and pulling consumers into your brand via search engines, social media and blogs.

5. Don’t fear new ideas, especially on the Web.  Your website is organic, so if something isn’t working you can easily change it. But you won’t be able to discover that one special tool that makes your site stand out if you don’t try new tactics.

One of the kickoff panels for SXSWi this year was run by Paul Boag, Creative Director of Headscape, a web agency based in England. The objective of his panel was not, as many thought, to make the design phase of a project pain free for designers, but to make it an easy, pleasing process for clients.

Boag noted that as designers, we sometimes fall into the trap of being defensive during the design process. He suggested the following collaborative techniques for ensuring a pain free experience for clients, and developers alike. 

Six Tips for Pain Free Design Signoff

1. Ensure the client understands their role in the project. Starting with the kickoff meeting, reiterate that the client's job is to find problems, not solutions.
2. Have a strong methodology and instill confidence in the project by making sure your development process is clearly outlined to the client.
3. Include the client often and early so that they feel engaged in the progress and development of the project. 
4. Educate your client about design decisions. Explain and justify your final decisions so the client will be confident and able to explain changes to other stakeholders or superiors.
5. Ask for specific kinds of feedback from the client. Target your questions so that you and the client can finish strong. Focus on the end result: “Will users like this?” “Does this fulfill our original design objectives?”
6. Avoid saying “no” during the process. Be open to discussing and negotiating prospective changes.

Over the years we’ve learned to adopt many of the principles Boag discussed. Involving our clients as team members during the design phase has eliminated the element of “surprise” that often comes from designing an entire website internally, then releasing it to the client in one single chunk. We also see it as our duty to keep our clients involved, as a measure of good customer service, allowing team work and “buy in” at important design phases.

There was a lot of buzz this year at SXSWi about HTML5 and CSS3. HTML, HyperText Markup Language, has been the standard language of the Web since its beginning. Versions of HTML4 have been used since 1997, so it's been a long time since we've gotten a major update to basic web language. CSS, Cascading Style Sheets, allows developers to style elements on a web page, making pages standard and friendly for viewers. With the innovations of HTML5 and CSS3, developers can make websites faster to run, easier to develop and nicer to view.

HTML5 has several new elements for developers to use including semantic replacements for common elements on a page like headers, navigation and footer blocks. Gaining the most steam was HTML5's support for <video> and <audio> tags. When developers want video and audio to play on a website, they almost always turn to Adobe Flash Player. HTML5 could eliminate the need for Flash in some circumstances, allowing pages to perform faster and still look and interact the same way.

CSS3 has a whole host of new ways to style web pages including adding web fonts, rounded corners, shadows, shading, and much more. These attributes mean developers will be less reliant on images, decreasing the amount of time it takes for a page to load.

As is often the case in web development, cool new technologies take some time to be implemented. Currently, HTML5 and CSS3 have the support of four of the five major browsers, the exception being Internet Explorer. Expected to be released in 2011, Internet Explorer 9 will support HTML5 and CSS3, however, until large numbers of consumers upgrade to IE9 or other modern browsers, it'll be awhile before a lot of these techniques can be used.

Here's a great page for visualizing how browsers are supporting HTML5 and CSS3. You'll instantly notice how current Internet Explorer options don't measure up. 

The ongoing web font battle was again a hot topic at SXSWi. Now that there is a way to implement web fonts by using CSS3 techniques (in Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome and Opera browsers), they are gaining even more steam in the industry.

The history of fonts on the Web is a brief one. There are currently only about 10 fonts supported on the Web; every website in the world with any HTML content is using at least one of them. So why do you see other fonts when browsing the Internet? To make websites more interesting, designers and developers put text in images or Flash, which can support any font imaginable. But, among the many drawbacks, text found in images/Flash isn’t searchable, selectable or scalable (an increasingly important factor with the emergence of mobile browsing).

You may be wondering why more fonts still aren’t commonplace online. The real crux is finding a way for font designers to sell their fonts, while preventing site visitors from downloading them illegally. If agreed on by the major browsers, it appears the solution is the WOFF format: developers will be able to purchase and use fonts on the Web, but the end user won’t be able to download them.

Using web fonts would be the beginning of a whole new world in browsing for web designers and site visitors alike. With the implementation of CSS3, we hope to see a standard font format that will make web fonts an active part of the online experience.

As designers, it’s important that we keep our eye on the prize: the target user for our finished product. During SXSWi, I sat in on a panel that highlighted some of the core concepts to keep in mind when designing and developing the first interaction a user has with your website. While geared toward the designer, these tactics can help the entire development team work together to create a fun, enticing user experience.

Tips for Designing the First 15 Minutes:

• Design with empathy. Remember what it’s like to visit your site for the very first time. Not everyone knows what’s expected of them.
• Give users the fun stuff first, and then ask them to save their work. Wait until there’s something to save.
• Integrate instructional and educational pieces into your initial user processes.
• Always look at your processes again with fresh eyes.

Some sites that do it right:

• Geni.com – “Best of breed” account creation and an easy progress saving system
• Mint.com – Super quick checkboxes and congratulatory feedback let you know you are progressing correctly
• Linkedin.com – Progress bar for account creation incentivizes users to keep going
• Tumblr.com – Quick and simple account setup

With the use of smart phones steadily growing, developers have become increasingly aware that the future of the Web may very well be in our pockets and purses and not on our desks. This has led to the need for applications that are lightweight and optimized for smaller screens and touch screens.

This year at SXSW Interactive, I attended a jaw-dropping session that explained how to make an iPhone application using only basic HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Speaker Jonathan Stark, a mobile and web app consultant, began coding in very basic HTML as a class full of developers and designers looked on with feigned interest… it was all code we've written a hundred times before. Then he explained the use of jQuery and jQTouch, JavaScript specifically for use on Apple iPhones and waited for the gasps…

By adding this JavaScript, his simple HTML code was immediately rendered on an iPhone as a really cool looking app: the buttons took on the iPhone format, the touch screen functionality was enabled and animations were activated when moving from one screen to the next. He went on to explain the capabilities of this script as the room sat in amazement.

There are many different ways to build applications, and sometimes you do need more complicated code to achieve more complicated design or function, but the bottom line of the session? "If you can build your app with HTML, CSS and JavaScript, then you probably should."

Stark’s discussion is a great example of what we can hope to see for the mobile web’s future: developers working together to dream up new ways to easily bridge the gap between standard web design and mobile devices. 

What tech trends will surface in 2010?

As always, plenty of buzz words echoed through SXSW Interactive, but this year, the striking difference was a shift of focus to the convergence of technical capabilities. The Convergence 2010 panel unveiled what may be in store for our very near interactive future; check out a recap of panelist Dan Shust's presentation below.

Ten Cool Things That Could Happen This Year (from Dan Shust):

1. Social becomes the thread. Look for social networks to further strengthen their role as the thread that holds together our digital existence.
2. Location matters. Watch as your current location and location patterns dictate the content you see online.
3. Entertainment on demand. Cloud-based entertainment will be available real-time, wherever you are.
4. Birth of the frontchannel. We’ll care less about the content we're discussing (backchannel) and more about our digital discussions (frontchannel).
5. Commerce atomizes. Our commerce experiences will happen in non-traditional locations, like on social networks.
6. Life is a game. Game theory will infuse our digital activities and we’ll be rewarded accordingly.
7. Interactive products. We will grow accustomed to having digital interactions with physical products.
8. Reality will be augmented. Immersion opportunities will continue to increase.
9. Digital is the new paper. The likes of the iPad will disrupt and transform our traditional thoughts on publishing, and maybe even our definition of the magazine.
10. Rise of the connected things. Imagine a bathroom scale that tweets your weight... it already exists.

Click here to view his full presentation and see pictures of technology on the horizon.  

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It’s that time of year when the Wright Strategies team converges with other like-minded, technology leaders and enthusiasts to learn about the latest trends, emerging tactics and best practices in web design and development. We're gearing up for SXSW Interactive, a five day interactive conference held in Austin each spring. Stay tuned for upcoming articles recounting what we’ve learned, what we’re excited about, and how it can help your site reach its maximum potential. Want more info on SXSWi? Visit http://www.sxsw.com/interactive. 

The Austin office will be closed from Friday, March 12 through Tuesday, March 16 but our support line is always open.  If you need immediate assistance with your site during that time, please email support@wrightstrategies.com.