There are many things that we can learn from the outstanding success of the new social networking website, Pinterest. For those of you who don’t know, Pinterest is the upstart social network whose mission is to connect everyone in the world through their interests by letting them tag and share anything they find on the Internet.

Here are two figures that should tell you how successful Pinterest has been at gaining traction: it has grown in popularity faster than any website in history, and it did so without much media attention, hitting 10 million unique monthly visitors faster than any website in history. And secondly, it is driving more traffic to retailers than huge websites like Google+, YouTube, and LinkedIn, combined.

There are hundreds of posts right now that talk about all the reasons for Pinterests outstanding growth and success. But here is one important thing to know: Pinterest invested in all the right foundational elements of their website, and not insignificantly, they invested in a mobile version of their website.

One of the figures you should be tracking (for free) is the percentage of your website visitors who access your site from a mobile device, such as an iPad, iPhone, Android device, etc. Our rule of thumb at CiV Digital is that, if more than 10% of your visitors are accessing a website from a mobile device, we recommend that you should create a version of your website that is optimized for mobile devices.

Here’s why: when someone accesses your website from a mobile device, they have: (1) a smaller screen, (2) a tiny keyboard, or no keyboard at all, and (3) they have a limited ability to store data on the fly. If you want your mobile visitors to have an outstanding experience with your website, then you need to first keep track of how your visitors are accessing the site, and secondly you need to optimize your site with them in mind.

This post is not intended to provide a comprehensive look at what’s required for a mobile version of your website. For that, you should email us. (hi@civdigital.com). In future posts, we’ll explain the difference between creating native mobile apps, and doing what Pinterest has done, which is to create a mobile optimized website with HTML5 — which is what we recommend to most of our clients. The bottom line is this: it’s a simple process to see how your visitors are accessing your website, and if a large number of them are using handheld, mobile devices, then you should have a strategy and website that gives them an outstanding experience.

DJ Smith is the CEO of CiV Digital. He encourages you to be considerate of your customers, and create a mobile friendly website for them. You can follow him and CiV Digital at @civideas on Twitter.

ESPN SportsCenter has found itself a goldmine of Twitter news in the last few months. NFL players Arian Foster (Houston Texans), Chris Johnson (Tennessee Titans), and Darnell Dockett (Arizona Cardinals) all found their way on the ESPN bottom line with Twitter blunders. All these masques by star NFL players highlight the phrase “think before you tweet.” Here is the quick lowdown on what happened:

• Arian Foster used the Twitter mobile app mobypicture to tweet the actual MRI photo of his injured hamstring. His actual tweet stated, “This is an MRI of my hamstring, The white stuff surrounding the muscle is known in the medical world as anti-awesome…” The intriguing thing about Foster’s tweet is that it’s the first time a professional athlete has posted medical photos on Twitter. The Texans PR team must be pulling out their hair out because of the negative media backlash and Foster’s unprofessionalism. ESPN however loves it because the bizarre nature of the tweet makes great news.

 

• Chris Johnson responded to message a fan sent to him criticizing his contract holdout by blasting him and other Titans fans on Twitter, “Can these fake Titan fans (shut the expletive up) on my timeline. I don’t have a regular job so don’t compare me to you and I can care less if uthink I’m greedy.” Johnson followed up with a clarifying tweet “…I’m not call the Titan fans fake at all. #LUV.” In PR, perception is often reality. Even with the clarification tweet, Johnson’s tweet still took a shot at the Titans most important customer, the fans. For what it is worth, Johnson received a six-year $56 million contract by the Titans a day later.

 

• Darnell Dockett went another direction then the last two on Twitter by voicing his opinion on gun laws. Dockett posted, “The gun laws in Az are super cool! I can damn near have a Grenade launcher on the seat (as) long as it’s registered I’m good. Lol nice.” Dockett might want to take note what happened when NBA player and former Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas joked about using guns.

Three players, three tweets, all covered by ESPN and the rest of the sports media world instantly. Twitter is infiltrating SportsCenter, for example “Social Circle” segments of SportsCenter broadcasts that cover chatter on Twitter and Facebook. From a journalistic sense it is interesting because players now can bypass the local sports reporter to get their voice out to mass media. All the player has to do is pull out his iPhone and by a press of the send button to make a statement is broadcasted worldwide. A tweet from a star NFL player is like a press release from a senior VP of a Fortune 500 company in the 1980’s.

Twitter Has Led To Policy Changes Inside ESPN

ESPN is taking note to the ever-growing popularity and impact Twitter has on the athletes they cover because they have changed their social media policy internally. ESPN management released a new Twitter policy for ESPN employees and talent. Some of the guidelines state, “Think before you tweet,” “Think before you retweet” and “[Twitter users] must be consistent with ESPN’s employee policies.” ESPN understands the power individual Twitter accounts has on the company image, branding and potential embarrassments.

The only suggestion I have for ESPN is that rather than making a policy that is limited exclusively to Twitter, they should make a comprehensive social media policy that covers all the major social platforms, which is advice that all of us would do well to follow.

Tim O’Keefe is a social media and marketing smartypants. He is also an NFL connoisseur and sports junkie.

This is the fourth year in a row that CiV Digital has won at least one award from the Web Marketing Association’s WebAwards competition.  We’re glad to keep the streak alive, and we’re glad that our work for Blood:Water was recognized.

What Is The Web Marketing Association’s WebAwards Competition?

Thousands of websites are submitted to the WebAwards judges every year, from around the world.  Winners are chosen in 96 categories.  The resulting awards are regarded as one of the Internet’s top recognitions.

Judges score the entries for 7 criteria:  Design, Innovation, Content, Technology, Interactivity, Copywriting and Ease of Use.  These scores are then weighed against industry averages and WebAward entry averages.  The top scorers are awarded Standards of Excellence, Outstanding Websites, Best Web Site of Industry, and (only one) Best of Show.

Judges consist of a select group of Internet professionals who have direct experience designing and managing Web sites – including members of the media, interactive creative directors, site designers, content providers and webmasters – with an in-depth understanding of the current state-of-the-art in Web site development and technology. Past judges have included top executives from leading organizations such as A&E Television Networks, Agency.com, BGT Partners, Blattner Brunner, Bridge Worldwide, The Cincinnati Enquirer, Comedy Central, Disney, Euro RSCG, Ion Global, J. Walter Thompson, John Deere Company, New York Post Interactive, Organic, Inc., Refinery, R/GA, Saatchi & Saatchi, SAP, Starwood Hotels, Sun Microsystems, Warner Bros. Online, Xerox and Website Magazine.

While we are glad to win the recognition from our peers, we are even more thankful for yet another opportunity to promote the good work our friends at Blood:Water Mission are doing.

CiV Digital has also won awards for its work with the Ashbrook Center and the NEH to create History Interactives for the Classroom as part of its We the People initiative, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International (JDRF) and Blood:Water Mission.

DJ Smith is the CEO and founder of CiV Digital.  He loves helping nonprofits and businesses do great things with the web.

CiV Digital was asked to help IJM create a web presence which better showcases their story – including incredible stories and successes, as well as videos and images.

Goals

For the project, our plan was centered on the following three goals:

Create a design which better promotes IJM story and is easier to use
Create a clean, modern design which highlights specific stories, news and successes; plus opportunities to engage with IJM as a donor or supporter.

Leverage social media to encourage participation
Integrate key components of IJM’s social media presence into the site

Develop Drupal theming, integration and support IJM development team
Work with internal programming team to create new, flexible Drupal base themes and support launch of new site

Together, we developed a series of wireframes which identified layout goals and content emphasis for both the homepage and interior pages. Once these were approved, the CiV Digital design team created a series of visual layouts and color palette options.

Key Features

Among the key concepts and features implemented in the final web approach:

Powerful visuals from IJM reinforce the human side of rescue and restoration story
Throughout the new site design we created spaces to feature the extraordinary images and video the IJM team has compiled in the course of documenting their work.

Social media dashboard monitors activity in popular channels; creates opportunities for engagement
The CiV team also created a social media dashboard on every page of the site which integrated feeds from Twitter, Facebook and YouTube while providing site visitors an opportunity to participate in these social media channels.

“Did you know?” toolbar provides useful information on IJM’s history, mission and achievements
At the bottom of each page this toolbar offers visitors facts about the organization’s founding, culture, achievements and affirmations from media and others.

Tabbed content simplifies browsing section content
CiV Digital’s design team devised a tabbed approach for section content allowing site visitors to quickly browse pages without wasted clicks.

Enhanced navigation maximizes space; quick access to popular content
The master navigation incorporates several innovative features such as a collapsible top row for search, give and email signups which conserves horizontal space. The ‘I want to…” dropdown provides one-click access to frequently requested content.

What They’re Saying…

After months of hard work, the dust cleared and the new IJM.org site was live to the world. That same day our inboxes were flooded with thank yous from IJM team members around the world.

“…Big thanks to CiV Digital for helping IJM launch our new website.  Everyone is thrilled with it. Great work!…”

“Just a quick word to thank you for your team’s work on the new IJM site. It looks beautiful, and is so much more current. Thank you so much for your remarkable contributions to the work of IJM…”

“…Thank you so much for CiV’s contributions to our new site. Thank you for sharing our belief in IJM’s vision. Your support of this project means a lot to all of us out here in India…”

Daniel Li, IJM’s Director of Interactive and Creative Services had this to say about our work together:

“…We continue to be grateful for CiV Digital’s innovation and creativity. Their desire to create lasting partnerships comes through their approach to our work together. They are good listeners and seem to anticipate where we’re trying to go – offering innovative solutions that fit well with our overall communications and missional goals. Glad to have them as part of the IJM team…”

Above: Mercy Lounge/Cannery Ballroom before Mat Kearney/LEAGUES show – Nashville, TN

Most of you know that last week was a big one for us at CiV Digital. We launched Tweetalist last week, which is the only Twitter tool that analyzes the influence of Twitterers based on public lists. You can use it to make comparison between leading Twitterers.

But last week was important for another big reason. I went to Nashville to kickoff the opening of CiV Digital’s presence in the Music City. This brings us closer to some of the organizations we work with (or have done work for in the past) in Nashville already, including Blood:Water Mission, Lwala Community Alliance, and Free for Life International. And it positions us well to expand new partnerships with excellent businesses, artists, and nonprofits that serve the Nashville area.

Allen Fuller our fearless leader in Nashville helped us connect with some amazing potential partners. We’re really excited about what’s ahead.

As a music lover, I felt very at home in Nashville last week, and I look forward to spending more time there in the near future. I took the photo in this post during the sound check before the very talented Mat Kearney and his also very talented opening act, LEAGUES took to the stage — their show was one of the highlights of a trip that included lots of great moments.

DJ Smith is the CEO of CiV Digital. When he’s not listening to — or attempting to compose music, he’s often thinking about the next time he gets to do either.

Learn more about the people and topics in this podcast:

• Tweetalist.com,
• DJ Smith, and
  
• Will Marlow.

Follow CiV Digital on Twitter at @civideas.

I made this quick video to provide an introduction to Tweetalist, and to help you better understand how it works.  We hope you enjoy the video, and let us know what you think in the comments below!

Will Marlow is Director of Digital Insights for CiV Digital.  Follow CiV Digital on Twitter here.

Tweetalist works by collecting certain information from the Twitter API, and then analyzing the true reach of a Twitter account based on the number and quality of the public lists where that person appears. By doing this, Tweetalist helps demystify certain aspects of Twitter influence.

We’ve been working on this app in the CiV Digital Lab over the past several months, and we’re delighted to make it available to the public. We hope you’ll visit Tweetalist.com to check it out, and stay tuned for more updates on Tweetalist.

We look forward to hearing what you think!

Will Marlow is the Director of Digital Insights for CiV Digital. Follow CiV Digital on Twitter at @civideas. You can get insights into Twitter influence using our new Twitter app, Tweetalist

So it is surprising when we see often little attention paid to getting design right. We’ve all seen them – sites which are often visually attractive but lack focus. Too much going on. 10 different embedded fonts. Clicks that take you to strange and unexpected places. I could go on.

There are clearly some guideposts to follow to keep you on the right side of the yellow lines. Here are five design mistakes you should avoid like the plague on your website.

Five Web Design Mistakes That You Should Avoid Like the Plague

1. Never have motion in more than one place on your homepage. Motion is a tricky thing on a website, because if you do it wrong, you’ll alienate your visitors with big flashing signs or banners that scroll too quickly for your visitors to read your messages. The rule of thumb is that you should avoid having more than one motion element on your website. This is because motion attracts the eye, and if you have more than one element moving on your site, your readers won’t know where to look first, and your website’s experience will be confusing.

One exception: you can have multiple motion elements on a website, but you need coordinated motion that enhances the visual hierarchy and doesn’t confuse it.

2. Don’t use fonts inconsistently. Nothing screams “look what I can do” like having random fonts across a webpage. You can (and should) get creative with fonts, and you don’t need to be a slave to just one font on a website.

But you should always have a clear reason why you pick one font over another font, and you should apply your fonts consistently across webpages on your site. You can even use multiple fonts (even embedded ones) but try to pair them so there is contrast or complement.

3. Don’t use every inch of space available. Don’t be afraid to use some amount of “negative space” on your website. The concept of negative space comes to us from the art world, and it refers to the space around an object.

On a website, you can draw attention to the most important elements of a page by consistently leaving negative space around your key content. This is especially useful around any “action items” that you want your visitors to click on, because there is nothing more frustrating for users than having difficulty clicking on a link because it is placed too close to another. In addition, the effective use of space is even more useful when people access your site from the less-roomier confines of their mobile phone.

4. Think about the devices that your visitors will use to access your website, and don’t just design your website for your own device. One of the many, many things that Google Analytics can tell you is exactly what devices your visitors are using to browse your website. This means you can see how many people visit your website from an iPhone, an iPad, an Android device, and the resolution quality of their laptops and desktops. A lot of people make a website look great from the computer they use to design the site, but they don’t put nearly as much thought into optimizing it for the other devices that their audience uses. For obvious reasons, this doesn’t make sense.

5. Avoid the temptation to overdesign and overbuild. Yes, there can be too much of a good thing, especially if you cannot sustain it. It’s more than just a design mistake, but it probably sends more websites off track than any other problem. If you don’t keep website creep under control, it’s only a matter of time before your website collapses under its own weight.

Nowadays, it’s easier than ever to create new websites. With the proliferation of easy-to-use platforms like WordPress, everyone seems to be designing and building websites. I mean, how hard can it be? Yet there is still something to be said for living within your digital means and not building past your capacity to create fresh and engaging content or resources. The expertise you need often has less to do with competency in specific tools and more to do with experience with the medium of the web.

There’s a lot that goes into designing a website that’s a fit for you and your organization, but there are also some common mistakes like the ones listed above that can throw even the best of intentions off track.

It goes without saying that rules in certain instances are made to be broken. As long as you have taken the time to articulate how the benefits of breaking of the rule outweigh a more standard approach, you can get away with bending or breaking certain rules.

Are there other common mistakes that you’d like to add to this list? Let us know in the comments below!

D.J. Smith is the CEO of CiV Digital. He designed his first website before most people new what a website was.

Here are three reasons why I love working with CiV Digital.

1.  CiV Digital focuses on approach, not technology. CiV Digital is one of the only technology companies I have encountered that has the courage to say that technology is only as good as the goals it helps accomplish. In other words, CiV Digital never begins a project with a specific set of tools in mind. Instead, we start by evaluating the business goals of each project, and then let those business goals determine the technology that is most appropriate.

2.  CiV Digital embraces data. As someone who has a background in the data analysis industry, this one is very important to me. Whenever I start working on a new marketing project for a client, I always look for ways to incorporate various types of user testing to help inform the project’s direction. For instance, if a client wants to improve its landing pages to increase the number of products sold on the website, then I’ll suggest two versions of the page to test back to back (in a split test or an A/B test) to find out which change has the best impact. Most technology firms pay lip service to the importance of this type of testing, but CiV Digital puts its money where its mouth is, and really gets behind efforts to test new web products to ensure that the client gets the most optimization for their money and time.

3.  CiV Digital’s people are generous with their time. Sometimes we can be too generous when we’re talking about options for marketing campaigns and new websites/products. Everyone here loves making businesses and nonprofits successful. This means that we end up having great discussions both internally and with clients — this helps everyone stay as sharp as can be.

I’m glad to be joining CiV Digital as the Director of Digital Insights, and if you’re a current CiV Digital customer, I look forward to introducing myself soon to explore ways I can be a resource for your organization.   And if you’re looking at CiV Digital for the first time and want to chat, I hope you’ll reach out to me at will at civdigital dotcom, or ping us on Twitter at @civideas.

Will Marlow is the Director of Digital Insights for CiV Digital.