Content – University of Derby – Digital Marketing Team blog

Staff profiles – who are they for and what do they do?

You might be reading this and thinking that you don’t need to read any further, however, before I lose your attention, just because you already have an ‘awesome’ staff profile, or you don’t have a staff profile doesn’t mean you won’t pick up some hints and tips.

Last year (July 2018) saw our new web site go live and, as I’m sure you have seen, it is pretty spectacular. The launch of the new website saw everything remodelled and updated, our staff profiles changed and now look better than ever.

Old style staff profile:

New style staff profile:

As displayed above, our new staff profiles have much more wow factor and look so much more visually appealing. With this in mind, our ‘image style’ changed from a headshot to a shot in action. This displays our staff in their natural environment and gives the profile personality and character.

Since the launch of the new site and a fresh look on our staff profiles, we have seen an increase in visits to our staff profiles. In the year July 2018 to July 2019, we have had 334,595 visits to all the pages in our staff profile area compared with 229,561 visits to all pages in the staff profile area from July 2017 to July 2018. That is an increase of 45.75% and highlights the success of our new look staff profiles (Google Analytics, 2019).

Furthermore, in the first year that our new website has been live, we have seen a decrease in bounce rate by 5.20% showing that users are interacting better with our new staff profiles. (Google Analytics, 2019) (For those who do not know what a page’s bounce rate is, it is the percentage of visitors who leave our website after viewing that page)

Why do we need staff profiles?

Staff profiles are great as they offer a place on the website our academics and support staff can make their own. It’s somewhere that can showcase your research, expertise and industry experience but, most importantly, it’s the area of the website where you can show your personality. This is why we want you to write your staff profile in the first person (I am …) so you are talking directly to your audience.

There is some essential information that we require on our academic staff profiles:

About – this should summarise the main aspects of your job roles and what your focus is (teaching, research, management etc)
Teaching responsibility – this should outline what courses you work on, any particular modules etc
Research interests – this should describe briefly the research topics you are involved in
My qualifications – highlighting what you have achieved

Experience in industry – any experience you have in industry (past or present)
Recent publications – this is where you can list your most recent work in date order
Abstract – every member of staff has to have an abstract on their profile that is a summary of their main roles at the University written in the third person (Callum is …)

With support staff profiles, you may not have any teaching responsibilities, but we still want you to show a high level of experience and expertise.

Who looks at our staff profiles?

We have a couple of two main groups of individuals who look at our staff profiles.

Business and external stakeholders
Current students and prospective students (Google Analytics 2019)

Business and external stakeholders are looking at staff profiles to identify what research our academics are involved in and to learn more about what our academics achieved here at the University of Derby.

Prospective students looking at staff profiles will be researching the academic teams on courses they are looking to study. They will be looking to see what research these academic are involved in and what industry experience they have. They are using staff profiles at the beginning of the recruitment cycle when they are looking at where to study, after an Open Day when they have discovered what our University has to offer and have spoken to academics and, finally, before arriving at University in to begin their time studying with us.

Current student are using staff profiles for getting in contact with staff. They also allow students to discover which academics would be the best to work with when they are looking at research areas for independent studies.

Which staff profiles were in our top 15 search results?

Professor Kathryn Mitchell (Vice–Chancellor)
Professor Ashiq Anjum (Professor of Distributed Systems) (Engineering and Technology)
Hari Punchihewa (Deputy Chief Executive and Finance Director)
Professor Lu Liu (Head of School and Professor of Distributed Computing) (Electronics, Computing and Mathematics)
Professor Antonio Liotta (Director of Data Science Centre) (Electronics, Computing and Mathematics)
Michael Sweet (Associate Professor in Aquatic Biology) (Life and Natural Science)
Professor Tristram Hooley (Professor of Career Education) (International Centre for Guidance Studies)
Professor Dennis Hayes (Professor of Education) (Arts, Humanities and Education)
Professor Miles Richardson (Director of core Psychology Programmes) (Life and Natural Science)
Professor Philp Hodgson (Head of Law, Criminology and Social Science) (Business, Law and Social Science)
Professor Alex Nunn (Professor of Global Economy) (Business, Law and Social Science)
Ian Turner (Associate Professor in Learning and Teaching) (Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching)
Professor Malcom Todd (Provost)
Professor Judith Lamie (Pro Vice-Chancellor, External Affairs)
Dr Ian Bake (Senior Lecture in Psychology) (Life and Natural Science)

What can you do to improve your staff profile?

Content is key when it comes to staff profiles. The more that you can put on your staff profile, the more someone can get to know who you are. What you get up to in your research and work is important, so why would you not want to share this? As well as ensuring the right amount of content is on your profile, it is also important to remember to keep your content up to date. If you keep up to date with your content regularly, changes won’t feel like a huge task compared with if you rewrite all of your content every few years.

Do not forget that we are more than happy to help you out with your staff profiles. We have our online guidance and as a team, we run our a fortnightly digital drop in session, where you can sit down with one of the team to discuss staff profile content, how to structure content on your staff profile or even how to use our content management system (CMS), Terminal Four.

A blog about using plain English

We need to use plain English. Plain English gets our message across quickly and easily. People understand it the first time they read it. Plain English is efficient. It uses short sentences. Is that plain enough for you?

The challenge we face is balancing plain English with getting across our brand personality and our key messages. We need to be welcoming and approachable. We also need to express our expertise. So we don’t want our English to be plain yet dull and cold. We want it to be warm, engaging and compelling. All this applies whether we are writing for print, the website or email communications.

Academia tends to have a strained relationship with plain English. I had a brief conversation recently with a colleague who has a pretty high level of academic qualification. They admitted that the further up the educational tree/mountain/ladder you climb, the more complicated the language you are encouraged to use.

In other words, Professors are told to talk fancy.

Cleverness

The reason behind all the jargon, complicated sentence structure, academic language and even Latin is to give an impression of high intellect, of expertise. Half the battle, surely? However, if the great idea is hidden behind too many long, complicated words, the meaning will be lost to too many people. It comes across as cleverness for the sake of cleverness.

Here is an interesting point from Gerry McGovern. In the past, when someone read a sentence they didn’t understand, they saw it as their fault: “I must be stupid.” Now, they see it as the fault of the organisation: “They must be stupid.”

So our audience knows that it is our job to make sure they understand the message. And they are right. We want people to understand what we are doing. We want everyone to understand that we are experts in our fields.

Clarity and brevity

And the trick is that other experts in these fields would much prefer us to use simple language. Another colleague shared this little treat with me.

In 2012, research by Christopher Trudeau at the Thomas M Cooley Law School in Michigan into the use of language found that the more educated the person, the more specialist their knowledge, the greater their preference for plain English. They may understand complicated language but they want clarity and brevity. They simply don’t have time for all those long words.

Professor Trudeau also found that the more complex the idea, the greater the need for plain English. This is a big challenge for us. But it is one we need to overcome. It means that all our producers of content need to understand the idea before they can express it in plain (but engaging) language.

Accessibility

And I haven’t even talked about accessibility yet. I’m going to do that now. Our aim is to be the most accessible university in the UK – both physically and online.

Making our content accessible means using language that everyone understands. And everyone includes the potential student, researcher, business partner, business partner’s granny. They could be 15 years old, they could be 83. They could have a PhD in biochemistry or they could have no qualifications at all.

Beyond our stated aim, we also have a legal requirement to make our website content accessible. There are standards we must meet. Many of these are technical. In terms of the language we use, the standard is simple:

Make text content readable and understandable

Ideally, text should be written to be easily readable by all levels of ability. If we do feel the need to use technically advanced text, we should provide easy-read alternatives to explain what we mean.

So call a spade a spade. Don’t call it a long-handled slab of sharpened forged steel.

Writing tools

There are a couple of tools you can use to test your language. These tools will judge you on your sentence length and structure, use of passive voice and word choice.

Within Word, you can access readability statistics through File/Options/Proofing. Tick Use readability statistics and OK that. Then use the grammar check (F7). You will have to go through the checks but you will then get a list of statistics. These include Flesch reading ease. You should be aiming for a score between 60 and 70. By complete accident, this blog scores 65.

You can also use Hemingway Editor, which will give you a readability score. This relates to the education level (US grades) required to understand your text. The app judges this blog to be readable by sixth-graders. They are 11 to 12 years old.

Support

For anyone across the University who is producing content for the website, we do offer Writing for the Web training. This gives you an idea of the type of language you should be using. Contact digitalsupport@derby.ac.uk.

And the general Style Guide for Writing is available on the Marketing and Student Recruitment page on staff ID Intranet @ Derby (under Professional Services).

There is also a useful piece from the Government Digital Service’s senior writers with ten tips for writing for blog posts, opinion pieces or presentations.

Building effective creative for paid Facebook campaigns

Facebook campaigns are often thrown together as a last resort to boost bookings or sales. This is because they are easy to set up and have a relatively low cost per conversion. However, they require more thorough planning if they are to be successful.

Facebook campaigns need building, ensuring each step is carefully crafted to ensure you’re able to get what you want out of the campaign and, preferably, for the lowest cost.

With users typically scrolling passively through newsfeeds, you only have a few seconds (maximum!) to grab their attention so, as content creators and advertisers, we don’t have it easy.

Once you’ve set your objective and targeting, all that remains is your creative – don’t fall down at the last hurdle.

Format and placement

Facebook supports a variety of advertising types, enabling your ads to appear on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and/or Audience Network. Each ad is made up of two components: the format and the placement.

Format defines what your ads look like. Choose from single image, single video, slideshow, carousel, collection and instant experience (aka canvas).

Placement defines where you want your ads to be displayed within Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and/or Audience Network:

Facebook (feeds, instant articles, in-stream videos, right column, suggested videos, marketplace, stories)
Instagram (feed, stories)
Messenger (inbox, stories, sponsored messages)
Audience Network (native, banner and interstitial, in-stream videos, rewarded videos)

It’s worth bearing in mind that the advertising objective selected at the start of the campaign impacts the formats and placements available to you at the creative stage.

Copy

Good copy writing is key to get your message across effectively and, ultimately, for a user to act on your advert.

Keep the message clear and concise

Use simple language so users can easily and quickly understand your message when scrolling through their feeds. However, make the most of space! Don’t be afraid to use the fields available to you.

Which takes us nicely onto the next point …

Keep in mind which formats and placements you are using

Some will display more copy than others (ie Facebook feed will display more copy than a right column ad) so ensure key information is included in the fields that are displayed consistently across all (or most) of the placements being used.

If the ad is for an event or product, add detail

Add dates, costs etc. People want to know this information up front! Avoid leaving the user disappointed by encouraging them to click through to your ad only for them to realise they cannot afford the product or are unavailable on that date.

Have one clear call to action

The audience should be able to easily and quickly understand what action they’re meant to take next.

Write for your audience

Within Facebook, your audience can be highly targeted, based on age, gender, location, interests, behaviours or connections. You can even create custom audiences, for example users who have already visited a specific webpage. With the ability to target more effectively, don’t settle for a one-size-fits-all approach.

Try splitting out audiences and tailoring copy for each. This may involve more work at first as you have to create multiple ad sets within your campaign but you may see better campaign results in the long term.

Imagery

Use visuals that match your copy

You’ve spent the time writing the copy, so keep your imagery relevant to your message.

Try to avoid copy on images or keep minimal at least

Consider the placements being used. Always ask yourself “will I be able to read the copy on mobile or in the right column?”

Ask yourself whether the imagery is accessible to everyone. Is key information displayed on the image? Will this be missed by users with impaired vision or those using a screen reader?

Facebook also has a review process that identifies the amount of image text used in an ad. Images with more than 20% text may be penalised, experiencing reduced delivery. So, if user experience isn’t a good enough reason, do it for yourself.

Use authentic imagery

Where possible, steer clear of stock imagery. The audience will be able to relate better to imagery that’s more authentic.

Consider different dimensions for different placements

If shown on Instagram feed, would you prefer a square version of the image? Maybe you’d prefer to use a square image for Facebook also, to stand out in the feed? Do you have vertical imagery to use on Instagram stories ads?

Video

Use the highest-quality source video available

Keep resolution high and try to avoid using video with black space around the edges (pillar boxing).

Choose attention-grabbing video thumbnails

From a user perspective, if the thumbnail is boring it’s likely the video is boring.

Consider video orientation

Today, 96% of online video consumption is on mobile (Social Chain, 2018) and people are using their phones vertically 98% of the time (Ogilvy, 2017). In a world centred on convenience, forcing users to turn their phone horizontally to watch video in widescreen is increasingly considered an inconvenience. If we want our video ads to be seen and, more importantly, watched, we need to be creating content that is optimised for mobile and building ads that match how users are consuming content. This means using square or vertical ratios.

Integrate captions into your video

85% of Facebook users now watch videos with the sound off (Sprout Social, 2018) and this trend can also be seen across other platforms. It’s therefore important to make sure your video can be understood effectively both with and without sound. Use of captions, and closed captions, ensure the content can be accessed by everyone, including those with hearing impairments or cognitive and learning disabilities.

Consider the length of your video

Ads under 15 seconds work best in feed and the top-performing Stories ads are under 10 seconds in length (Facebook and Oracle, Sept 2017). Notice that says ‘under’, so don’t use 10/15 seconds as a target length every time you produce a video. Trial using different video lengths and see what works best for you – shorter could, in fact, be better.

Test, test and test again

Facebook provides a split testing feature that allows you to test different variations of an advert to see which works best and improve future campaigns.

When setting up your next campaign, trial two different ads, varying the imagery or copy, to see which gets the best results.

This also helps to remove personal opinion when building the creative. Only the audience knows what it wants and the results may surprise you!

In need of inspiration?

Facebook has created an Ad Library to provide advertising transparency. What this also means is that we can search and browse all ads currently running across Facebook platforms. Just search for a name, topic or organisation and voila, ads for days!

Happy peeking and, most importantly, …

Happy building!

How to improve the search visibility on your content

We all want our content to appear on the first page of a Google search. That is all down to how your content is ranked. And you can do something about that. There are similarities in how your content ranks in search results between search engines and our on-site search. Here are some tips you can take to improve the search visibility of your content…

Do your research

An example my old boss used was to imagine you’re writing a page about a pen. Should you be writing about a black pen, a ball point pen, a biro? Before you start writing, it’s important to do your research to find out the kind of language and phrases people are using when they search.

There are lots of tools you can use for finding out keyword ideas. A couple I would recommend are Ubersuggest and Google’s Keyword Planner. They are both free tools, the later requires you to be logged into Adwords, which you can do through your Google account. These tools will give you ideas of the kinds of terms and phrases you need be using throughout your content.

Below is an example of the keywords ideas from Ubersuggest for the term apprenticeships.

Ubersuggest keyword idea of apprenticeship — Example keyword ideas generated using Ubersuggest for the keyword apprenticeships

URL

The words used in the URL of your content are important. By default, in T4 the URL is formed from the name of the section, however, moderators can override this by using the output uri field. It is best practice to set this yourself, keeping your URL concise, including relevant key words/phrases and ignoring stop words such as and, the, a, etc.

For example, if the name of your section is Accounting and Finance courses at the University of Derby then accounting-finance-courses would be a good output uri.

Meta description

The meta description is a snippet of usually up to 160 characters which summarises the content of your page. The snippet is shown in search results and is important in getting users to click through to your content. Use your research to help you write your description.

In T4, by default the abstract within the Section Config content type is used for the meta description. Moderators can override this using the description field on the metadata tab of your section.

Page headings

The use of headings to structure your content well will improve user experience by making your pages more readable. Better quality content can lead to lower bounce rates and users spending more time on pages. These are positive indicators when it comes to ranking search results. To find out more, Justin’s recent post on the importance of headings is well worth a read.

Internal linking

The more links there are to a page within a website, the more important it is deemed to be. Therefore, link to your content appropriately.

For example, if you’re writing content about plastic pollution and there’s a news article that covers the same subject, add a link. If you don’t own the content where you want the link to be added reach out to the relevant person. If you’re unsure who that is, email digitalsupport@derby.ac.uk.

This works both ways too. Within your content, you should be adding links where appropriate, for example, if you refer to an academic member of staff in your content, link to their staff profile.

External linking

On a similar note, external websites that link to your content influence search results. Once your content is live, look for opportunities for other websites to link to your content. Don’t be afraid to ask. Email colleagues, contacts, web admins and blog owners who you think will be interested in your content. Again it works both ways so link out from content appropriately too.

Be wary though, bad link building practice eg buying links is penalised by Google so ensure any links built are authentic and organic.

Sharing your content on your social media networks will help too. But don’t just post it, engage with people talking about subjects related to your content and share with relevant users.

What next?

Have a go at applying the tips above to your content. If you have any questions or if you’d like to talk in more detail about improving the search visibility of your content, you can book a slot at one of our drop-in sessions. You can do both by emailing digitalsupport@derby.ac.uk.

The importance of headings

How many times have you landed on a page only to be overwhelmed by the amount of copy on it?

Headings are not only a great way of breaking up paragraphs, but also allowing the reader to skim the page for the information they wish to digest, especially if they aren’t committed to reading every last word.

You probably already know headings are a great way of providing structure to a page visually, but they do so much more – here’s why they’re an essential part of any web page.

Headings make your content accessible

We’ve just topped the Sitemorse INDEX for UK Universities and Higher Education for the second successive quarter, so we know just how important website accessibility is. We need to ensure that every page we create or edit meets the same high standards; and right at the top of any page checklist should be headings.

In order to achieve an AA accessibility rating or above you should ensure that “Headings and labels describe topic or purpose” Headings and Labels, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

This is why headings should be treated as labels – they are there to introduce or summarise content below – they should not be unrelated statements or marketing jargon.

“When headings are clear and descriptive, users can find the information they seek more easily, and they can understand the relationships between different parts of the content more easily.” W3C.

This technical structure is particularly important for assistive technologies such as screen readers to read out the structure and provide in-page navigation to the user.

Headings influence your search rankings

The often-forgotten benefit of correctly using headings is that search engines use them to index the structure and content of your web pages; why wouldn’t you go to the effort of adding these correctly in order to improve your search ranking on Google?

Search engines like Google pay the most attention to H1 headings, but they will also look for the other headings within a page. This is why it’s important that your H2s are treated correctly as sub-headings and contain similar keywords to your H1 tag. They should be easily readable, make sense and not be stuffed with keywords, as the likes of Google will recognise this!

What you need to know about headings

Headings go from Heading 1 (H1) all the way down to Heading 6 (H6), the least important heading.

All pages should include an H1 – this is the most important heading on your page and this may often be very similar to the Page title (or in T4 terms, the Section Name) but your heading tag can often be more descriptive and expand on the Page title.

The H1 should give readers an indication of what the page is about and you should always make sure that you only have one Heading 1 on a page, as this will allow the likes of Google to understand the context of your page’s content.

H1 headings should be followed by an H2 and this should be followed by an H3 and so on.

Skipping heading ranks should be avoided as this can be very confusing and if the structure isn’t hierarchical, users of assistive technologies (eg screen readers) may not understand the relationship between the headings.

This means you should make sure that an H2 is not followed directly by an H4, for example. However, you can skip ranks when closing subsections, so a Heading 2 starting a new section can follow a Heading 4 if that closes the previous section.

Finally, remember that headings should be used for headings only – they shouldn’t be used to make text larger or bold and definitely not links!

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us or book a slot at one of our drop-in sessions which are regularly advertised in Inform. You can do both by emailing digitalsupport@derby.ac.uk.

Why we are looking for Gold Standard case studies – and how to create them

Content marketing is the new rock ’n’ roll. Possibly. You’d probably have to speak to a marketing expert to confirm this.

What is certain is that creating engaging, compelling content about our students, our graduates, our researchers, our business partners, our university is hugely important. It consolidates and builds on our reputation, our profile.

This is why we are working on a series of case studies. We want these stories to be interesting to prospective students but also to current students, parents, business, the wider world. People who will share the story.

More than interesting

In fact, we want them to be more than interesting. We want to make it difficult for people not to read them. We are looking for a Gold Standard in our case studies.

This means giving them the best title, the best images, the best introduction. And we want to keep people on these pages so they can see all the great things we are doing, get to see all the links and promo blocks we have put in for them. But also so they get to know us, get to understand what we do, what we are good at. Get to like us, to respect us. And, if they do, they may well tell their friends about us. Share us. Spread the word.

Something I prepared earlier

We started this process by publishing a small handful of case studies. These case studies have a specific focus but also have a broad appeal.

For instance, our Business Studies case study is about a TV show that everybody watches or has at least heard of. And our Architecture students’ piece is about positive public reaction to their designs for Derby city centre and the Assembly Rooms. We also have a Forensic Science student working in a CSI unit – you know, like on the telly. And Paul Cummins’s poppies that marked the centenary of the First World War. Oh, and a Data Science case study about some research that could turn your laptop into a mini supercomputer. And we have links to these case studies from promo blocks on subject and course pages.

Joining in the fun

Since I first wrote this, our product teams have rolled their sleeves up and produced some excellent case studies. Some are finding it easier than others but there is no doubt that the stories are compelling, such as Gaming student lands dream job with Xbox, The student who redesigned our University and From the office to the ice wall: Dainora’s leap of faith.

And that is the crux of what we are trying to do. Compelling stories. You need an angle, a hook. Something you can pull out and say, in old Sun newspaper lingo: “Hey, Doris, look at this!” It needs to be a story worth telling. Because, if we produce great stories consistently and put them out there, people will keep coming back to us, sharing us. And so it builds

A how-to guide

If you haven’t got to grips with it yet, I have created a case study template. It is full of hints and tips.

These will help you get a handle on what is required for one of these case studies – and give you an idea on how to construct them. But also read the case studies other people have produced. If you rate them, let them know and ask them how they went about it.

Keep using your Q&A forms. Learn which questions work best and share these with your colleagues. Also remember that not every Q&A response will be worth a case study. Recognise that. If you’re not sure about it, try to sell it to the person sitting next to you. And also note that some of the case studies we have created are simply a repurposing of already-existing material from news articles and blogs. So keep your eyes peeled.

What Derby did for us

One thing that all these case studies need is for our students, graduates, business partners to tell us what we have done to help them become amazing. That’s the most important thing we can share, intertwined with the compelling story: how we at the University of Derby have added value to their lives by giving them skills, contacts, opportunities etc. We want people to see this and think: “That could be me.”

Remind me why we’re doing this?

We’re doing this because case studies, gold-standard case studies, are a great way to engage with our audience. Take a look at this lovely Twitter-related spike …

And here are some visitors to our Forensic Science course page who may not have got there without our case study …

Some figures

The new approach is measurably better than the old approach. Here are some figures for our newest set of case studies:

Xbox: 100 page views and 4 min average view time (live for one month).

Student redesign: 130 page views and 4.5 min average view time (month and a half).

Ice wall: 16 page views and 3 min average view time (one week).

And here are some more figures which relate to case studies that were on the old site and have been reworked in the new format for the new site.

New site

Ed Hollands: 370 page views, 5 min average view time (five months)

Forensic Science: 350 page views, 3.5 min average view time (four months)

Paul Cummins: 180 page views, 4 min average view time (two months)

Old site

I have taken a snapshot of these figures over a similar period that the case study has been live on the new site – and have also added the total number of page views they received.

Ed Hollands: 107 page views, 3.5 min (total 189)

Forensic Science: 80 page views, 2 min (total 96)

Paul Cummins: 17 page views, 3.5 min (total 71)

And, yes, that last one is why I put Dainora’s ice wall case study figure up. She received almost the same number of views in one week as Paul, the star of the First World War centenary, did in two months. It is clear the new approach to case studies and how they are being used and shared is getting our message out there so much better.

Tips for getting your email opened and for it to be actually read.

Email marketing is a widely used and a highly effective communication tool for reaching people quickly. But, in such a crowded market place, where the average officer worker receives 121 emails per day [Lifewire] – and with nearly 50% of that being classed as spam – how do you stand out?

Well, it’s tough to do! When you’re sending out mass emails, gaining an open rate of 21.81% and a click through rate of 2.43% is a good average to achieve [Mailchimp]. But what can you do bump those numbers up?

Here are my top tips:

Subject line

If your subject line isn’t informative, you most likely won’t entice people to open it. It’s like opening a new shop without signs – the customers won’t see what is on offer and will walk on by. It’s the same for emails. It’s your first opportunity to grab their attention so try personalising the subject line with names and any other relevant information you have in your Customer-relationship management system (CRM).

Try explaining what the email is about too:

Hey Daniel, Still interested in Education courses? Visit our Open Day on the 19 January.

Personalisation

Once the user has opened the email, you need to display relevant content. Personalisation is key to keeping the users interested, so one simple tip is to try to include the persons name within the first paragraph.

If you have a CRM system which is linked to your email marketing system, you’re likely to be able to pass key details about the target customer to the system, enabling you to create an email that is entirely tailored to them. Using Segments you can build one email which contains all types of content yet, when it gets delivered, it will only show the end user content relevant to them.

So, if User A likes Cats and User B likes Dogs, then both users will get the email at the same time but one email will contain details and images about cats and the other one about dogs.

Call to action

I recently attended a user-experience course and the biggest take away I gained – and started to implement in my emails – is to make the Call-To-Action button one colour and, importantly, a colour that doesn’t really feature on the email anywhere else. So, in this example, the main body is blue, text white and all buttons are yellow. This helps the customer quickly distinguish that the yellow colour indicates an action is required.

Use GIFs

So, how else do you stand out from the crowd? Well, when we can, we use GIFs to add an extra impact. They have exploded onto the scene in recent years and are seen as an everyday feature across all social media platforms.

GIFs are framed animations, made from video clips or static images and they usually last a maximum of 8 seconds – any longer and the file size will just become too large to send via email.

When used on email, they ‘play’ on every email client platform, except the desktop version of Outlook where it displays a static image of the GIF’s first frame instead.

The below links show what can be done with GIFs, from complex simple movement such as a clock ticking/eyes blinking, to complex movie-like scenes:

Fast Track to Clearing

Standard Communication template

However its important to know, even if you have nailed all of the above, if your database of contacts is not good or out of date, the results will never match your expectations for the campaign, so regular database cleansing is a must.

This blog is about how we can make our website as accessible as possible

Do you understand what this blog is about? If you believe it will give you information about how we can make our website as accessible as possible then the title has done its job.

I have, obviously, over-egged the pudding to make a point [do you all understand that metaphor? If not, it is not accessible]. But the first step on the road to an accessible website is to have a title for each page that tells the reader what they can find on the page. And that continues through the initial content, the subheads, the images, everything. At no point do we want our audience to be wondering what our page is about.

That is the first stage of accessibility. And it is also the first item in our content checklist titled How to achieve AA accessibility rating:

Your web page must have a title that describes its topic or purpose

You will be thinking that goes without saying but one of the biggest blockers for accessibility is assumed knowledge.

A short story

Let me tell you a story. A short one.

I put together a list of 15 points specifically relating to content and how to make it accessible. I shared this list with a few people and asked for feedback. I was slightly embarrassed to get replies back saying: “What does this mean?”

Clearly my list wasn’t accessible. Not everybody knows what an “alt tag” is and what it does. I do and had assumed everyone else did as well. The checklist has now been updated with better descriptions. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be improved. All feedback welcomed.

It’s the law

We have an approaching legal requirement to make our website accessible. And we need to achieve an AA accessibility rating. We have put together our content checklist on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. This is what WCAG says about accessibility:

“Following these guidelines will make content accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities, including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning disabilities, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity and combinations of these. Following these guidelines will also often make your web content more usable to users in general.”

Our checklist

And this is our AA content accessibility checklist:

Your web page must have a title that describes its topic or purpose.
All images must have “alt tags”. This is a description of the image and can be added in the Media Library in the “Description” field. NB when creating a media gallery, ensure you use a different description for each image.
The purpose of each link on the page can be determined from the link text alone. Do not use simply ‘Click here’ or ‘Read more’.
Use easy-read alternatives to technically advanced text. Ideally text should be written to be easily readable by all levels of ability.
Only play sound if user activates it [unless there is a good reason otherwise].
Do not rely solely on shape, size, visual location, orientation or sound for understanding or navigation. Eg avoid content such as “click on the triangular button on the right when the music starts”.
Do not change context (eg go to another page, play video) unless this is activated by the user. We want our users’ journey through our website to be as predictable as possible.
Provide submit buttons to initiate change of context (eg go to another page, play video) and warn users in advance when opening a new window [opens in new window].
Avoid images of text as these cannot be read by screen readers (logos are OK – with the appropriate alt tag).
If language changes within the text, mark it in the source code so it is recognised by screen readers. Eg if there is a paragraph in French, use code <p lang=”fr”>Il y a un paragraphe en francais.</p>
Information conveyed by colour differences should also be explained in text. For instance, the following four points are technical and will need to be discussed with video/audio providers.
Provide a text transcript of audio-only content.
Provide captions for all prerecorded audio/video content. Note: captions include subtitles plus text to describe important sounds.
Provide a second audio track on all prerecorded video to provide audio description – or a second version of the video with audio description.
Provide captions on live audio content.

What’s next?

We are testing our accessibility regularly using the SiteMorse platform and updating our pages where necessary.

We are also taking steps to improve our methods and our content types as we learn more about what is required. For instance, users can now toggle captions on and off on video within the website, and we now have the provision to add text transcripts to video files. We are also investigating the possibility of users being able to toggle to pared down, less visually noisy versions of pages. Every day’s a school day.

A close-up of the YouTube caption button

What we need now is for our content producers to make sure any new content achieves these AA standards.

All new video we upload to the website must have captions and we also want to add a full transcript of what is said in our videos. By the time the law applies to us, we need to make sure EVERY video, new or old, on our website has both of these features. NOTE: We cannot rely on YouTube’s auto captions. They seem to work OK a lot of the time but will then say something jawdroppingly embarrassing. We do not want this. We now have guidance on how to correct subtitles and create transcripts.

Accessibility is a challenge and one we intend to meet well before it becomes a legal requirement. The bigger challenge is to make sure the website is accessible while also being appealing and engaging to all our users.