The only thing you have to do is to enter the amount of clicks purchased, the cost-per-click, conversion rate and average sale per customer and voilà the application will show you the ROI of your pay-per-click advertising campaigns.

It’s really great somebody put together all these ideas and concepts digital people are reflecting on these days! As a person who worked in digital advertising, I think it should be a “must-read” for those who still think digital marketing is something “below the line”.

So what is the Zero Moment of Truth (or ZMOT)?

Let me cite the author “It’s a new decision-making moment…ZMOT is that moment when you grab your laptop, mobile phone or some other wired device and start learning about about a product or service (or potential boyfriend) you’re thinking about trying or buying”.

I am sure this is something you’ve done hundreds of times but maybe you will be surprised to know that the ZMOT can be absolutely crucial to the decision-making process. And it happens not only with cars, computers or your summer holidays; it can be applied to all or almost all products and services you can imagine. In his book Jim Lecinski provides a lot of survey data that will dispel any doubts about the importance of ZMOT.

Why is it called the Zero Moment of Truth?

As the author explains, in 2005 the Wall Street Journal published a front-page story about “the critical importance of the seven seconds after a shopper first encounters a store shelf full of detergents or toothpaste or anything else”. P&G called that moment the First Moment of Truth, or FMOT. There is also the Second Moment of Truth that occurs when the consumer uses the product and decides whether he or she likes it or not.

So now that you know what the ZMOT is, you would probably like to know how to deal with it and how you can take an advantage of this new consumer behaviour. That’s why I highly recommend reading the book by Jim Lecinski because it is really inspirational and will give you a lot of useful information on how to start winning at ZMOT.

Great initiative! If you like the idea, you may join the cause by displaying the countdown banner to Internet Explorer 6 users on your website. There are also some useful resources for the corporate users (including Customer Case Studies).

• There are more than 200 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
• People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile users.

It is aimed at the Spanish market but honestly you don’t have to know Spanish to discover how it works. Just click on the Facebook Connect button and see what will happen – you won’t be disappointed The idea is to demonstrate that the new MINI can adapt to any terrain even to your Facebook page.

Hope you will like it

So what does it mean? Will “I like” button replace “Share” button? According to the Facebook Spokeswoman Malorie Lucich (check the complete article published at Mashable) “while Facebook will continue to support the Share button, Like is the “recommended solution moving forward.”

(via Mashable)

1- “You must not incentivize users to use…Facebook social channels, or imply that an incentive is directly tied to the use of our channels”.

2-“You must not pre-fill fields that are intended for users to express themselves (like “stream stories”, etc)”

3-“Users must always consent to any Stream story you post on their behalf. If you do not use the Feed form which gives users the option to preview and customize their post, you must not publish a Stream story unless a user has explicitly indicated an intention to share that content, e.g., by clicking a button or checking a box that clearly explains that their content will be shared”.

4- “You must provide users with an easily identifiable “skip” option whenever you present users with an option to use a Facebook social channel”.

It seems like not all’s fair in Facebook

Source: Facebook Developers

So…here goes a list of tools found on the web or which I worked with:

• Redmine (http://www.redmine.org/)
• Basecamp (http://basecamphq.com/)
• Disqourse (http://disqourse.com/)
• Workamajig® (http://www.workamajig.com)

To be continued…

By the way try background colour change option (from white to dark grey).

Facebook guys say “A test user is essentially a user account associated with an application created for the purpose of testing the functionality of that application. We want developers to be able to test their applications and build automated tests. The “Test Users” feature is intended to satisfy both of these use cases. You can create one and use it for ad-hoc testing, or you can create many and use them for automated testing”.

Good luck

• Site analysis tools (e.g. Website Speed Test to check how long a website take to load, Spiderview to see what webcrawlers and spiders see, Meta Tag Analyzer, and others)
• Keyword tools (e.g. Keyword Density)
• Server & Domains tools (e.g. Domain Popularity, Reverse IP)
• Link Tools (Link Popularity, Backlinks to check the number of indexed pages and backlinks, Outbound Links, etc)
• Miscellaneous (Meta Tag Generator, URL Rewrite, Sitemap Generator)

Just upload your photo (or take one with your webcam), choose one of the designs from the site gallery, place it just where you want and voilà! The way it fits to your skin is surprising! Very good digital production!

Here goes an example – After & Before. It looks just like real!

Curious? Have a look at this video to get more details

Via Digital Buzz Blog.

• 90% of users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but don’t contribute).
• 9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time.
• 1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions

Jakob Nielsen also presents the downsides of this situation and makes some recommendations on how to better equalize user participation. It is definitely worth reading!

Additionally, you may customize & animate your character (like making him smile or wink his eyes, etc).

Digimi was created by the company DAZ 3D-Gizmoz  “that provides a central solution to design, manage and transport high-quality digital characters that can be deployed in virtual worlds, cross-platform games, social networks, mobile applications and professional modeling and animation tools”.

Let’s get started with some data on how users actually perceive and interact with newsletters.

According to the Nielsen Norman Group Report (“Email Newsletter Usability: Email Newsletter Usability: 149 Design Guidelines for Newsletter Subscription, Content, and Account Maintenance Based on Usability Studies“):

• The good thing about newsletters is that they create much more of a bond between user and company than a website can. But on the other hand usability problems have much stronger impact on the customer relationship than they normally do.
• Users spend 51 seconds reading the average newsletter
• 69 % of users said that they look forward to receiving at least one newsletter, and most users said a newsletter had become part of their routine.

In other words, newsletters is definitely a good way of communicating with your audience but producing a good newsletter requires a lot of usability knowledge.

To be continued…

More details on the new FB policy may be found at http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=429618852130.

Website creators say “Pattern Tap was born out of our love for the best interface designs on the web. We wanted a place where we could come and easily find the stuff we were looking for.”

Here goes the link to the complete report http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp.

However don’t forget to check your website statistics to know what browser is most preferred by your website users.

+ it encourages brand loyalty - a good game is fun and engages customers with a brand, it also may become viral (especially if using social networks tools like Share or iLike). Here goes one nice example – Battle of the Cheetos using Facebook Connect.

+ in addtion, it is a good way to communicate product benefits. Don’t believe me check this game Google launched to promote its new browser Chrome. The game is called Fastball – guess what Chrome feature should it communicate

To be continued…

• 87% of consumers would switch brands based on association with a good cause.
• 50% of consumers would pay more for products from brands that support causes.

1-Place: first in search results and later in user feeds both on Twitter.com and other third-party clients that access the service

2-Interaction: users will be able “re-tweet” the ad, make it favorite and even reply to it.

3-Costs: initially, advertisers will bid on keywords on a cost-per-thousand basis, but Twitter is developing a performance model that could be the basis for pricing based on a metric called “resonance” — impact judged on how much a tweet is passed around, marked as a favorite or how often a user clicks through a posted link. Ads that perform well will stay in the system; ads that don’t rise above the resonance score of a typical tweet from a marketer will fall out. Ultimately, Mr. Costolo wants marketers to pay for ads based on the lift in resonance over a standard tweet.

4-First Advertisers: Starbucks, Bravo and Virgin America

5-All yours!: Unlike search ads on Google, Bing or Yahoo, there will only ever be one Twitter ad displayed at a time.

Other facts:

There will be also professional accounts available that will include the ability to have multiple users on one account — plus a dashboard that shows what’s happening with a brand on Twitter and integration with promoted tweets.