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Slide 1: Do Real People Really Use Tag Clouds? Research To Help Separate Web 2.0’s Hits From Hype Garrick Schmitt Vice President, User Experience Avenue A | Razorfish

Slide 2: I.  Digital Consumer Behavior Study II.  What The Data Means For Designers III.  Downloads and Further Analysis

Slide 3: Digital Consumer Behavior Study

Slide 4: Do Consumers Use Tag Clouds?

Slide 5: Design vs. Demographics: How do people “discover” things? How do people adopt emerging (Web 2.0) technologies? What drives consumers online purchase habits? How has video changed the consumer landscape? Are mobile services being widely used, or not?

Slide 6: ‘Connected Consumers’ Lead the Way: Broadband access Have spent $200 online in last calendar year Have visited socially-oriented site (MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Classmates, Yahoo!, etc.) Geographically, demographically and economically diverse

Slide 7: Web 2.0 rEvolution is Well Underway: Today’s consumer is actively personalizing their digital experiences, sampling niche content and participating with increasing frequency.

Slide 8: Google Continues to Dominate with ‘Connected Consumers’: Start Pages: 35% have Google 24% have Yahoo! 10% have AOL 10% have MSN 31% have “Other”

Slide 9: MySpace Still Social Network of Choice for ‘Connected Consumers’: Social media usage: 66% have used MySpace 65% have used YouTube 42% have used Classmates 19% have used Facebook 17% have used Flickr 14% have used Linked.In 4% have used Yelp

Slide 10: The End of Mass Markets? Niche audiences are finding niche content, in abundance. 60% customize start pages and 56% use RSS feeds.

Slide 11: The Age of “MeMedia” Has Arrived: Nearly 70% of consumers read blogs and 40% write their own blog or post to other blogs.

Slide 12: The End of Branded Retail? The vast majority of consumers start their shopping experiences with search engines, regardless of the product price. 54.41% begin their digital shopping experience with a search engine for (<$100) 45.72% begin their digital shopping experience with a search engine ($1000>)

Slide 13: Brand Loyalty Battered Online: 38% of shoppers purchase from websites that offer the “best price available” 38% of shoppers purchase from a website that is “known and respected” (e.g. Amazon.com) 17% of shoppers purchase from a multi-channel retailer with an “offline store” (e.g. Best Buy) 7% of shoppers purchase from a website with the best shipping and return policy (e.g. Zappos) 49% have uploaded a video online

Slide 14: Peers Continue to Drive Consumer Preference: The vast majority of consumers rely on user generated reviews to make purchasing and content consumption decisions. 85.03% use most popular or most emailed links on websites 55.04% rely on user reviews to make purchase decisions

Slide 15: Online Video Usage Soaring: 95% of users have watched a video online in the past three months 85% have watched a movie trailer online before going to a movie theater 72% have watched a TV show online in the past three months 58% have used an online service to download or order movies 49% have uploaded a video online

Slide 16: Mobile Data Usage Still Nascent: Even amongst “connected consumers” mobile data usage has remained slight. Photo-taking and sharing remains one bright spot. 53.36% use mobile phone cameras to take and share pictures 35.92% use mobile data services with some frequency

Slide 17: Do Consumers Use Tag Clouds? 35.08% use tag clouds at least once in a while

Slide 18: What Does This Mean For Designers?

Slide 19: I.  Web 2.0 Features Need to Evolve II.  We Need To Design For Distribution III.  We Need To Design For Participation

Slide 20: Evolution: From Geegaws to Wayfinding The features and functions of Web 2.0 need to be designed to appeal beyond the cognoscenti. Tag clouds can evolve into a supplemental UGC navigation schema. Yahoo! Food and CNN: • Tag clouds supplement navigation schemas • ‘Hot Topics’ or ‘Buzz’ enables real-time views of content popularity

Slide 21: Evolution: From RSS to Visualization Link scanning is growing in popularity as RSS feed consumption and subscriptions are now mainstream consumer behavior. What can we learn from Digg, Facebook and alltop? Designing an RSS inspired future: • Play with page length and # of links • Create visual hierarchy via font size and color • Introduce categorization around topics with parents and subs

Slide 22: Participation: Give Users More Controls, Not Less Users need more controls, not less, to tailor their experiences with a product or service. Think Tivo (thumbs up, thumbs down) or Netflix (stars or “not interested”). Why Facebook & Netflix Get It: • Prominent user controls and adaptive information display • User interaction supersedes “programmed content”

Slide 23: Participation: Enable Posting, Rating and More Consumers are participating with digital products and services en masse. Creating outlets for expression, commenting, rating and other discussion is critical. Why Dell and Starbucks Get It: • Utilize Salesforces’ Idea App to generate ideas and conversation from consumers • Creates a unique channel for submission/posting, rating and discussion • Enables community to affect change and monitor progress

Slide 24: Distribution: The Homepage is Dying Search engines will continue to massively impact marketers, retailers and publishers by driving mass amounts of traffic deep into digital properties. Optimizing and engaging these consumers is key. Why the NYTimes.com gets it: • Treat every article page like a homepage • Create options for sharing and social browsing • Removed “paid wall” for TimesSelect

Slide 25: Distribution: Flows Are Expanding, Radically Search, social networks, RSS, widgets and other content aggregators are disrupting the traditional flow of consumers through transactional sites. As a result, flows are expanding dramatically. Why Williams-Sonoma gets it: • Product pages are the new homepage • Rich media and usage scenarios reinforce “consideration” and “preference” on one page • Barriers fall between product page and point-of-sale

Slide 26: Distribution: It’s a Niche, Niche World Consumers will continue to personalize their digital experiences en masse. Increased content portability through RSS and widgets will make subscriptions a key metric for audience engagement in ‘08. Why Red Bull gets it: • Content is highly portable via RSS, AJAX apps, iPhone apps, etc. • Goes on and offline everywhere their consumers want them to be • All content and rich media is incredibly viral

Slide 27: Distribution: Distribution Trumps Destination Retailers, marketers and publishers know that they need to go to where consumers are instead of waiting for consumers to come to them. Optimizing for search, plus placement on top properties is the key to success -- and survival. Why CBS gets it: • Programming is distributed to all major portals and venues (Yahoo! to iTunes) • Community is centralized at CBS properties • Content is “widget-ized” for placement on audience blogs and social media sites

Slide 28: Distribution: Mobile Audiences Will Follow Tech The U.S. is still a Third World country when it comes to mobility. The iPhone, upcoming gPhone, next rev of Windows Mobile and the rush to serve mobile ads will generate tons of interest in ‘08 but audiences will still remain small. Why Apple gets it: • Browser-based application platform • Shared OS and UI • Future support for rich media interfaces (e.g. Flash)

Slide 29: Downloads and Further Analysis

Slide 30: For more information: Digital Design Blog: http://www.digitaldesignblog.com Consumer Behavior Study: http://www.avenuea-razorfish.com/reports/DigConsStudy.pdf AARF Digital Design Outlook: http://www.avenuea-razorfish.com/reports/RegDDO2007.html AARF Digital Outlook Report: http://www.avenuea-razorfish.com/reports/ RegOutlook2008.html

Slide 31: Thank You Garrick Schmitt Vice President, User Experience Digital Design Blog http://www.digitaldesignblog.com