In a previous blog, we discussed preliminary, site-level data around the LIVESTRONG.org redesign and launch. With three months of data now available, we revisited the site hoping to better answer the question: how does the new site fulfill its goals as opposed to the old site? An A/B test would be the best, but in the absence of one, and with limited insight into the old site’s on-site activities, we decided to revisit some of the metrics we pulled following launch and pay special attention to bounce rate of new visitors who accessed the site via search. Here’s why we did it, how we did it, and what we found …in three easy steps! 

Step 1: Identify Company and Web Site Goals

As an organization, LIVESTRONG seeks to help anyone whose life is affected by cancer. So at a very high level, a successful visit to LIVESTRONG.org could include:

1. Effectively accessing information about cancer, cancer support, or available resources.
2. Learning how to donate time or resources to the LIVESTRONG cause or about other ways to get involved in sponsored events.

Based on that, an improved Web site would not only have to better help persons who already use the site, but it would have to indicate a propensity for helping persons who didn’t necessarily know where to look in the first place. 

Step 2: Identify Metric(s) that Speak to Those Goals

To find the information they need, people undoubtedly need to look at more than one page and spend a little time on the site. For that reason, we decided to update the time-on-site and bounce rate metrics we examined at launch to see if the positive trends continued through July.

To gauge the new site’s ability to assist new community members, we turned to the bounce rate of new visitors who arrived via natural search. We focused on this segment because there’s a good chance those visitors weren’t necessarily looking for the LIVESTRONG domain when they hit site, even though they likely constitute people LIVESTRONG hopes to assist. 

Step 3: Pull the Data and Compare

 While pages per visit have remained comparable since Jan 2010 (between 2-3 pages per visit), it appears people elect to spend more time on the site.

• Bounce rate has continued to decrease month-over-month since launch — ultimately dropping from 63.67% in March 2010 to 44.56% in July 2010.
• For the three months following launch (May 2010-July 2010), visits to the new site have averaged 4:18. From January 2010 to April 2010, the old site averaged only 1:58 per visit.

People are finding more engaging content more efficiently, and when they land on the new site, they’re choosing to view more content more often than with the previous design. 

We also found that as new visitors hit the domain through search, they’re electing to stay more often as well — even more so than other types of visitors.

• Bounce rate among new visitors arriving at the site through natural search has continued to decrease month-over-month since launch — ultimately dropping from 62.94% in March 2010 to 30.74% in July 2010!

This is great news from a design perspective, since these folks likely represent an opportunity to expand LIVESTRONG’s community.

Springbox had the privilege to work with the Visual Arts Center (VAC) at the University of Texas at Austin, developing a new brand identity for the institution. I was on the Springbox team that created the brand identity and recently attended the VAC's grand opening on Friday, October 24th.

The new VAC gallery is located on the southeast corner of the Arts Department. Approaching the gallery, a series of steps takes you up to the entrance. This was the first chance to catch a striking glimpse of the work we created. The front side of every step is painted such that while you look at it from the base, it creates the VAC logo, which we designed.

As you walk in, the gallery opens into a large area where the artist in residence displays their work. The current piece titled ZZZ’s, by the Los Angeles-based artist Ry Rocklen, is a collection of found objects placed around a sequence of tiled carpets, which expands up toward the ceiling. It’s the kind of piece you can immerse yourself in and get a feel from all angles. Ry goes into more detail with VAC Director Jade Walker in explaining the concepts behind the sculpture.

Walking further back on the first floor is an exhibition titled Unveiled, which includes pieces by University of Texas students and alumni. This exhibition's theme centers around transparency, clearly noted by Self-Portrait, a column of neatly folded and stacked t-shirts belonging to the artist Arturo Agüero, reaching around 20 feet high and ordered in a sequence that flows through an entire color spectrum. Upstairs another group exhibition titled Deconstruct and Reconstruction included several visiting artists’ pieces, including sculpture, video installations and paintings.

The gallery as a whole is a large space with many large areas designed to give the pieces the breadth and attention they deserve, allow visitors to immerse themselves in the work, and, most exciting for me, our branding work is presented throughout the space on all types of media. I won’t lie when I say it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside to know that we were a part of this new and exciting space for intersecting ideas in art.

What’s that cooking in the Knoxville? At high noon, the foodies in the Springbox Lunch Club created a feast of stick-to-your-ribs comfort food. The tastes and aromas were amazing. Couldn’t be there to experience it? We’re working on a scratch-and-sniff plug-in for HTML5 and the iPad. Stay tuned for that upgrade, other future technologies and more food.

In a blog post back in July, we outlined the impact of Springbox’s Facebook ads on Central Market's Passport Argentina campaign — noting the traffic’s high engagement metrics and new visitor percentage. It was great to see the positive impact social media had on that promotion. However we were curious if we could expect a… second helping of highly qualified traffic on our next campaign. (Oh, don’t groan. It wasn’t that bad.)

From Aug. 18-31, 2010, Central Market hosted their Hatch Chile Festival, which features Hatch Chile-focused cooking classes, recipes, blogs and a cooking contest. To help foster involvement, Springbox designed an interactive, Flash-based homepage takeover with callouts to enter the recipe contest, sign-up for cooking classes and events, and enter for a chance to help judge recipe submissions. Springbox also managed Facebook ads to help drive traffic to the site, which we launched on the 19th. As we saw with the Passport Argentina campaign, the Hatch Chile-themed Facebook ads drove a notable amount of visits (3,823) to the site and provided better-qualified traffic than the most comparable source, Doubleclick, which referred slightly more visits overall: 4,125. Our ads featured two call-to-actions: one that asked people to submit their recipes to the contest, and another that requested entries to judge. Similar to the Doubleclick ads, which ran during the same time period, these Facebook ads:

• Drove traffic the “In-Store Now” page of the site (where persons registered to both enter and judge the contest).
• Represented CPC/impression-based campaign referrals.

Their similarities, however, end there. The Springbox-managed Facebook ads delivered serious results:

• 31.68% higher recipe submission rate. 
• 2,676.76% higher “enter to judge” rate.
• 5.60% lower bounce rate.

We were especially surprised at the click-through on the “Enter to Judge” ads, so we dug a little deeper. What was the “Enter to Judge” form completion rate for persons who arrived at the site via Facebook? 57.14%. All other traffic sources averaged only 26.00%. The Facebook ads also procured more new visitors as a percentage of total referrals, which is great from a brand awareness perspective.

Check back soon for more insights around this promotion. In the next blog post, we’ll discuss the performance of the homepage takeover.

Prologue: Tom attended the Flash in The Can 2010 event in San Francisco and has documented his experience. The opinions and/or views expressed in this series of posts are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Springbox. 

Last day of the conference. The first speaker for the day is Robert Reinhardt, who will be talking about Flash video and where it all fits in with HTML5 and Silverlight. Turns out, Matt and I have talked to this guy a few times. He’s written many books about Flash, including the Flash Bible, and is super-friendly and approachable. His talk was refreshing because it proves how far behind other technologies are when it comes to video. He explained how we need to help our clients understand who their audience is and what they want. I couldn’t agree more. 

We need to educate our clients to not think so much about where they will deploy their application and how it will be created. Instead, they should think about the problems they want to solve and who their audience is.  For example, Reinhardt had a client who demanded that an application work on the iPhone. Why? Because she had an iPhone. After analyzing site analytics and looking at a breakdown of visitors, it was revealed that less than five percent of Reinhardt’s client’s audience used iPhones. In the end, it wasn’t cost effective to build the same experience to work on the iPhone. However, what can be cost-effective is to tailor your mobile experience to fit the needs of specific users. For instance, the aforementioned client had varying hours of operation and a location that was difficult to find — two key items that likely concerned her mobile audience. In the end, the client’s mobile execution highlighted the company’s hours, provided its location and included a few specifics about products. Reinhardt’s client was able to address the needs of the mobile customer while deploying a version that satisfied the needs of desktop users.  

It was time to wrap things up for FiTC, at least for us. We needed to catch an afternoon flight, so we only had time for one more presentation. Grant Skinner, a well-known leader in creating all kinds of cool flash tools, games and applications gave a talk about how he formulates ideas, the direction of his current work, and where he’s focusing his future efforts. What I gained most from his insight is doing the most with the free time you have. We have so many distractions throughout the day, with current projects, social events, Facebook, Twitter, email, websites, videos and on and on. Most great ideas come out of projects that you’re passionate about. Make free time every day — even if it’s for only 20 minutes a day — to work on what you’re passionate about. There’s a good chance that some goofing around in your production tool could potentially lead to some really exciting client work. At Springbox, it’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day production for our clients, but if we can find that time to focus on new and innovative ideas, it may eventually lead to more quality tools for our clients. 

So what did I learn at this conference? Here are the key points: 

1. Flash is not dead. It’s thriving.
2. Mobile is King right now. Tomorrow, who knows?
3. Android supports Flash. Android is big and getting bigger by the day.
4. San Francisco is cold in the summer.
5. Passionate work will (almost) always be rewarded.
6. Adobe cares about its customers.
7. Flash nerds like to party.