Digital Transformation

responsive web design

The five golden rules of responsive web design

In May 2010, Ethan Marcotte started the craze that is Responsive Web Design, when we wrote his article of the same name for A List Apart. This article was so popular, he even wrote a book on the topic.

This introduction of fluid grids, flexible images and media queries has changed the way we’ve designed our websites quite dramatically. We’ve been re-sizing our browser windows ever since.

Starting off as a trend, Responsive Web Design has fast become the hot-topic of our industry and has now become the norm.

Over the past few years I have worked on several RWD projects. In almost all of these projects I have used a different design process, produced different deliverables and encountered many different problems.

Based on these experiences, and given that RWD is now becoming the norm, my workflow has had to adapt. Here are five areas in which I believe designers are required to step up in order to adapt to the responsive web.

The digital talent shortage in retail careers

The simplest question in a changing retail environment remains ‘how do companies meet customer expectations?’.

Many customers have digital expectations. Accordingly, companies must be digitally fluent or risk alienating the customer.

Having all of a company’s digital knowledge within an ecommerce team is no longer sufficient to keep up. Digital knowledge is needed in marketing, merchandising, the supply chain, customer service, HR, PR and beyond.

With a limited pool of digital talent so quickly snapped up by pureplays and companies willing to attract with high wages, it’s hard for retailers to simply employ ‘digital staff’ to plug these gaps.

Shop.org, the digital side of the National Retail Foundation (NRF) has written an open letter to retail CEOs about perfecting the talent mix, and much of it echoes what we’ve been writing on Econsultancy.

So what can CEOs do to address this talent shortage?

Give your content away for maximum ROI: a Rijksstudio case study

It doesn’t matter what sector you work in, or what stage of the ‘journey’ you are on (it’s not unlike X Factor), digital entails transforming your products and services in a way that can sometimes feel antithetical.

Whether it’s newspapers increasing their prices, travel companies investing in new technology, or art galleries removing copyright.

That’s exactly what the Rijksmuseum did in 2012, when it put a lot of its collection online and created the Rijksstudio, allowing the public to curate, purchase, download and rework bona fide masterpieces.

Building on this work, Rijksstudio has just announced the winners of its ‘Make Your Own Masterpiece’ competition, with entrants using the collection to design something of their own.

Let’s take a look at this very Dutch and very admirable project.

Employee engagement is as vital as customer experience

In the days when the world was real, consumer facing organisations had mission statements often engraved into a piece of metal and screwed into one of each stores’ four walls.

The mission statement usually referenced helping a community, both by providing employment and services or goods to the populace. The emphasis was on quality, both for employees and customers.

Some would say both of these commitments were neglected by many in the age of globalisation. But digital transformation programmes now gain their impetus from the need to improve customer experience, enabled by new technology.

So what’s on the other side of the coin? Is cultural change happening internally with the aim of improving employee engagement and well-being?

This is the draw of startups, mostly low pay but with a small shot at fortune and with the guarantee of flexible working and no bureaucracy. Of course, these benefits mean a lot more than just business hammocks.

The latest Towers Watson survey, released last year, shows that over two thirds of UK employers plan to increase spending on health and well-being in the next year. So what’s important to consider when laying out the employee prong of your digital transformation programme?

I’ve been looking at Good Day At Work’s latest annual report, looking at wellbeing in the workplace, to see if there are ways technology can help.

death tombstone

The many ‘deaths’ of digital marketing

In the last six months there has been talk of the death of digital marketing. Forrester recently mooted that digital marketing is dead and that we are now in an era of “post-digital” marketing. 

In his keynote address at Dmexco in Cologne last September, P&G’s global brand building officer Marc Pritchard also talked about the end of digital marketing as something separate or distinct.

Indeed this is a view that Econsultancy and Marketing Week espoused in our Modern Marketing Manifesto which we published almost a year ago.

We cut ‘digital’ as one of the key elements of marketing from the initial draft and focus instead on integration, customer experience, brand, data and other elements irrespective of medium or channel.

How are finance brands helping customers to bank safely?

The reality today is that we, as consumers, have more and more digital engagements requiring different security elements, hence simplicity is key.

Banking is one entity that we all see as fundamental and need access to.

Through this article, I will highlight what banks are doing to help customers to manage their finances safely, the direction that digital banking security will take in the future and how security fits into a wider context. 

thumbs-down

10 excruciating signs your organisation is digitally deficient

At Econsultancy we’ve discussed several times what the elements of digital culture are and why it’s good for business.

But we’ve never really covered what is really horrendous, quite possibly because we do like to focus on the positive whenever we can.

Today, I’m going to focus on the signs that show your organisation is desperately behind the times, because unfortunately such issues are rife in many corporate environments today.

If your organisation has any of the below, chances are they are irritating people beyond all comprehension, getting in the way of work and have no genuine utility behind them. 

Banish these things immediately, or make a quick buck by shorting the share price of the offending institution.

Read below. I accept no responsibility for any migraines you suffer…

In conversation: the CEO of the Financial Times

I’ve been writing about presentations I watched at Digital Media Strategies 2014, including talks by Verdens Gang, Axel Springer and the New York Times. So apologies if publishing isn’t your thing. 

But that’s sort of the joy of discussing media companies, how do they become more than mere old fashioned publishers. How do they find new streams of revenue and restructure so that subscriptions work and digital actually makes some money? 

One of the spots at the aforementioned conference was CEO of the Financial Times, John Ridding having a fireside chat with Ken Doctor, President of Newsonomics. 

Many interesting facts, figures and opinions were teased out, so I thought I’d round them up here.

The home of the future, today. How smart is that?

Qualcomm has been busy diversifying beyond chips and they now have an impressive range of software and even a smart watch.

Its smart home demo was one of my Mobile World Congress highlights and shows how technology will make our lives even easier in the coming years.

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