Knowmad Blog

I’ve been thinking a lot about the value of website audience research while working on audience research for a client. To be honest, we haven’t always done this research. You’re probably surprised at the honesty and I cringe a little now while admitting it.

It’s not that we didn’t know the value of audience research. We all know that it’s important to know who your audience is whether you’re writing, performing or creating a design. Otherwise, how can you ensure quality or perform well?

Sometimes, we just did it informally for an internal guide and didn’t deliver the research to the client. Other times, sadly, it just got skipped because there was no budget. So for a dark time in Knowmad’s history, we didn’t formalize the audience research process and it wasn’t fun.

These days, I don’t know how we designed a site without this valuable and easy to obtain information! Crazy, I know. I also know we’re not alone here in having skimped on the audience research step in the past so I thought I’d share some insight into our ever-evolving process. Read the rest of this entry →

One of my favorite questions to ask prospective clients is why they have or want a Website. Granted, in 2010, it’s de rigueur for a business to have a Website. However, building a Website just because everyone else is doing it is an unsatisfactory reason that will produce limited results at best. If you don’t have the time and budget to build a serious Website, you should consider this strategy. Otherwise, there’s really no excuse to ignore this important question which can be used to define your goals, create a strategy & measure the success of your efforts. Read the rest of this entry →

Last week, Kmart and Sears Holding Co. came up in my news reader, announcing kmartdesign.com and other web initiatives by Sears Holding Co. to boost the Kmart brand performance and sales.

Kmart isn’t a place I shop, which isn’t saying a lot because I’m not a big in-store shopper. I can’t say I’ve even been on the Kmart website until reading this news nugget. The brand doesn’t strike me as modern, so it made me curious about how the company is using the web and what results they might achieve.

After a quick search, I found that Kmart has several initiatives on the web including a mobile app (kmart2go), mygofer.com and kmartdesign.com. Business strategy and the web are two of my favorite topics so I began to wonder…

What can we learn from Kmart?

Here’s what stands out to me about Kmart’s web strategy, none of which is surprising and gives us a great example to look at for web strategy.

• Clearly define business goals
• Segment and target specific audiences.
• Offer presentation formats specific to the target audience
• Use Social Media to augment existing marketing, PR and sales strategies

Read the rest of this entry →