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15 Feb

Twitter Takeover – Matt Davidson

by: Desirae Odjick No Comments

Our brand isn’t defined by a single person – it’s in the hands of each bv02 employee, every day. So today, we’re taking it literally, and we’re handing over the keys to the bv02 Twitter account. The Twitter Takeovers will continue as a regular series every other Friday, to help you get to know the different voices of bv02. Let the games begin.

Meet Matt Davidson. He’s been an integral part of our strategy team for the past five years, and when he isn’t busy generating big ideas, he finds time to create amazing photos and videos, and play some bike polo.

What do you do as part of the strategy team?

I wear a lot of hats. I help with the upfront sales, facilitate sessions with our clients, and then I work with the strategy team to get our ideas out on paper. We map out our solution and then present that back to the client and make sure it solves their problem. It ends up being a very broad role that has me involved in many parts of the process, which I like.

Do you have any favourite parts of your role?

I love presenting an idea and hitting it out of the park – knowing that the client has what they need to succeed. Leaving the meeting room with everyone smiling is one of the best feelings in the world.

What have been some of the most interesting projects you’ve worked on?

I’ve worked on some really great projects, including the Beluga Cam for Arctic Watch and building the web presence for the Petrobelli Altarpiece. If I had to choose, some of the most interesting strategy work that I’ve done has been for the Help Me Tell My Story assessment – we had to think like four- and five-year-olds to design the iPad application, and we were designing solutions for children who couldn’t read or write (but loved iPads!)

Can you tell us a bit about some of your side projects?

Most of my side projects revolve around video, art and photography. I’ve explored stereographic panoramas, shot a ton of snowboard video, and taken many a photo.

You’re really involved with the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of Canada (CCFC) – can you tell us a bit about the organization and some of the events?

I’m on the Executive Committee this year for Ottawa. The CCFC is the biggest non-governmental funder of Crohn’s and Colitis research in the world, and the research they support has already made some pretty cool advancements. At the Ottawa level though, it’s more peer to peer support, event organization and photography. I take photos at most of our events, and I wrote a guest post for their youth blog about adventures with IBD.

So, you play bike polo. Before we met, I had never heard of bike polo. How did you get involved in that?

Bike polo has been around forever (well, by forever, I mean like 10 years). About 3 years ago, I biked by the court and saw everyone playing. I asked around and found out when rookie night was, and I’ve been going strong since then. Now I’m part of the bike polo group here in Ottawa (Mallets of Mayhem.) Aside from playing, we also head out to park cleanup days, and to city meetings to push for more funding and support from the city.

Would you rather fight 100 duck-sized horses or one horse-sized duck?

One horse-sized duck. Imagine how good it would taste after you beat it!

Categories: Web

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14 Feb

“A game-changer in terms of technology”

by: Desirae Odjick No Comments

We’ve been working with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Education, school divisions, communities and educational consultants over the past two years to pilot and implement a holistic language assessment for early learners in Saskatchewan. This week, the assessment was featured in a column in the Leader Post, talking about the innovative nature of the program.

“We had no idea that by the end of it we’d have a puppet who interviewed kids,” Miller said.

“It’s really a game-changer in terms of technology, and we’re working on what other kinds of technologies we can build into learning.”

Read the article about the assessment to find out more about how it’s being integrated into schools, and the impact it’s having.  You can also learn more about the theory behind the assessment in Jarrett Laughlin’s most recent bv02 blog post, and read our case study related to our work on the Help Me Tell My Story assessment.

Categories: bv02 Clients, technology

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08 Feb

Improve Your Online Advertising with Google’s Enhanced AdWords Campaigns

by: Jason Faber No Comments

We live in a multi-device world. People are no longer connected to only one device. They swiftly shift from desktop to tablet to smartphone to laptop. Interestingly enough, when users switch devices they are often not changing their session – they are simply continuing it on a new device. According to Google, 90% of multi-device users move between devices to accomplish a given task, whether it be communication, search, entertainment or shopping. With that in mind, how do we as advertisers ensure that  that we are targeting the right people at the right time on the right device? With their new enhanced AdWords campaigns, Google is doing its part to help simplify advertising in a multi-device world.

An Opportunity Arises.

Multiple devices. People on the move. Real-time, local search. While this may be daunting and overwhelming to some businesses, it should be viewed as an immense opportunity. Imagine the possibilities this presents us with.

Enhanced AdWords Campaigns

Google has taken the opportunity approach. Let’s use the example of a sushi restaurant. A user is sitting at their desktop computer in their office at noon on a weekday and searches “takeout sushi”. Up comes an ad for sushi with a link to the online menu. However, later that same evening a different user who is out of the house and within 1km of the sushi place searches the same “takeout sushi” keyword on their mobile device. Based on the time of day, their location and their device, they are presented with a different ad, from the same campaign. This ad provides them with a click-to-call phone number or perhaps a link to directions on how to get to the restaurant.

Ads that are highly specific and provide context to the user are most effective. Not only can advertisers use signals such as location, time of day and device type without having to set up several separate campaigns, but they can also benefit from a feature known as bid adjustments, which allows you to manage specific bids across the aforementioned signals.

For example, an advertiser can bid 20% higher on a keyword triggered by someone searching from within half a kilometer of the business’ location, or 50% lower if the keyword is searched after 10pm. This feature gives advertisers complete power over the bidding, targeting and execution of all of their ads.

Want to learn more about enhanced Google AdWords campaigns? Contact us today to talk our digital marketing team about how we can help bring your online advertising efforts to the next level.

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Categories: Digital Marketing

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05 Feb

Adaptive Images in Sitecore

by: Scott Mulligan No Comments

Hello folks. I have released a first version of the Sitecore Adaptive Images module. I think it will be a very useful codebase to start from and I’m excited to continue extending its functionality in the coming weeks and months.

The idea of adaptive images is nothing new, but this module takes that concept and leverages the Sitecore Media Library in order to provide a solution that is tightly integrated with Sitecore. The media caching and rich image manipulation features built into Sitecore make it a great tool for tackling the problems that plague responsive images. This module is a drag and drop solution that will work on your existing site, as it requires no changes to your mark-up.

What is the Problem?

Responsive design is becoming very popular within the web community. That is not a problem. It’s actually quite exciting. The problem arises when dealing with images within the responsive design methodology. Responsive design dictates that markup (and images) are altered depending on the screen size of the users device. So in theory that can mean that an image that is displayed to a user on a 27″ monitor is the same image that is displayed on their 3.5″ mobile device. That is a problem.

There is no reason that the 3.5″ mobile device should be served the image in it’s original large dimensions and large file size. Adaptive images attempts to mitigate this problem by detecting a user’s screen size and re-scaling the images to a more manageable file size. So, for example, that means that a mobile user is not served a 1000px wide image when their device is only 480px wide. The end result is that your users are happy because the images appear sooner in their browser and precious bandwidth is saved.

Read the full article about the Adaptive Images module for Sitecore on my website.

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Categories: Sitecore, Web

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01 Feb

Twitter Takeover: Jason Fournier

by: Desirae Odjick No Comments

Our brand isn’t defined by a single person – it’s in the hands of each bv02 employee, every day.  So today, we’re taking it literally, and we’re handing over the keys to the bv02 Twitter account.  The Twitter Takeovers will continue as a regular series on Fridays, to help you get to know the different voices of bv02.  Let the games begin.

Meet Jason Fournier, project manager extraordinaire.  He can build you a Gantt chart in his sleep, and then wake up before dawn to capture the perfect sunrise photo. He’s just efficient like that.

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Growing up as a kid, I either wanted to be a firefighter or a rock star.

Is being a Project Manager anything like either of those?

Well, I do enjoy putting out digital fires.  [Acknowledges corny joke.]

What are your favourite parts of being in client services?

I really enjoy working with people.  I love being able to guide clients through their project and see it come to life together. It’s also great when you get to see projects from start to finish–I like the completion aspect of it. As a former product manager, I also really enjoy having input at different parts through the process and shaping the end product alongside my clients.

So, we heard a rumour you were kind of interested in photography. True or false?

True. I’m into photography. I just enjoy it–it’s a love affair that started early, and solidified during my degree in GIS and remote sensing. Now, instead of looking at pictures taken from space, I focus on photos that were taken relatively closer.

What are your favourite subjects to photograph?

I love shooting landscapes and portraits. I also enjoy black and white photography and architectural or urban shots, those are the big things. I actually don’t mind sitting in ditches.  …Let me explain: a lot of my photos are taken from low angles, because that is generally the perspective I need to get the shot.  You know who doesn’t appreciate this dedication to art?  Dogs.  This was the case last year when I was greeted by several while setting up for a shot. We both agreed to part ways.

Soundtrack to your life question: pick one situation and the most appropriate song to accompany it.

Here’s one: sunrises, and The Doors’ “Waiting for the Sun.”

I actually Instagrammed that as the title as one of my photos. I foolishly didn’t plan for the -20 temperature and didn’t have mittens or anything. I was sitting there waiting for the sun to rise behind a barn somewhere in Carp and that song started playing in my head, so now I think of it anytime I’m shooting a sunrise.

Categories: bv02 office

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25 Jan

Twitter Takeover: Justin MacNeil

by: Desirae Odjick 1 Comment

Our brand isn’t defined by a single person – it’s in the hands of each bv02 employee, every day.  So today, we’re taking it literally, and we’re handing over the keys to the bv02 Twitter account.  The Twitter Takeovers will continue as a regular series on Fridays, to help you get to know the different voices of bv02.  Let the games begin.

Meet Justin MacNeil, one of bv02’s senior developers.  He has an awesome nickname (Tang) and an extensive knowledge about pretty much everything. When we think “Who in the office would know the answer to this?” the answer, more often than not, involves Tang.

Your nickname around the office, for those who don’t know, is Tang. What’s up with that?

Essentially it just happened.  Justin turned into Just-tang, and then it became Tang.  No exciting story. [Smiles] I should just make up a different story every time someone asks.

How long have you worked at bv02?

About five years now. I started out focusing on design, and then moved to doing front end development  and now I focus on web development.

So you went from design to web development? Tell us about that.

Well, right now I do a bit of everything, from front-end development with HTML and CSS, to setting up servers, integrating CMSes like Wordpress and Expression Engine, working with APIs, and all that good stuff. I took graphic design in school and we touched a bit on development, one or two HTML classes, and I was always more interested in digital design over print because of the interaction and versatility. That made it a natural transition when I started working more on the development side. Having an eye for detail, which is key in design, really helps with front-end development. I’m glad I made the transition from design to development early on. I like solving problems. Almost every new project has some new technical challenge and I enjoy using new tools and technologies to solve them. I also get to work on a lot of interesting projects for great clients.

What has been your most interesting project at bv02?

So far, I’d have to say my most interesting project has been working on OC Transpo’s website. It’s an important site that gets over 10,000 visitors a day, and the visitors rely on the site for information to help them plan their day. It’s been fun to work on such an important site. I started on the project doing front-end design, but over the years we’ve worked with OC Transpo, I’ve transitioned to handling more and more of the core development. It’s been great getting to explore all aspects of developing such an intricate site.

What do you do when you aren’t ‘devving’?

I read a lot. Some of my favourite books include… Wow, I’m going to need to give you a list. Here we go.

  • The Drunkard’s Walk – Leonard Mlodinow
  • Superfreakonomics – Steven Levitt, Stephen Dubner
  • Food Inc. – Peter Pringle
  • Don’t Make Me Think – Steve Krug

If you could pick one situation, and a theme song for that situation, what would it be?

Probably working during that crunch time to deliver a project for a client, and “Don’t Stop Me Now” by Queen.

And ok, I have to ask. Favourite GIF right now?

Dog on an escalator. (http://i.imgur.com/mvnR8.gif)

Categories: bv02 office

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23 Jan

7 Ways Your PPC and SEO Can Work Together

by: Jason Faber No Comments

Delving into search marketing can be an intimidating task. Right off the bat, most companies are faced with the same dilemma – do we invest in PPC or SEO? While paid and organic search are often viewed as two exclusive initiatives, they are in fact two sides of the same coin: search marketing.

There are many ways in which PPC and SEO efforts compliment each other, and lead to a more successful search marketing strategy. Employing both strategies will not only increase the overall number of impressions you receive in a search engine results page, but can also lead to more clicks and conversions.

Think of PPC as a shorter term initiative. AdWords campaigns can be relatively easily set up, and can offer results and provide data almost immediately. On the other hand, SEO should be viewed as a marathon, not a sprint. They not only take a great deal of time and effort to implement, but it can take upwards of 3-6 months before any appreciable results are seen. While some marketers find that this lag time frustrating, kickstarting your search efforts with a PPC campaign is always a good strategy.

In the meantime, considering the following; a site optimized for search will help the quality score of your PPC campaigns, thus giving you a better return on your paid search investment. So instead of trying to determine if you should be doing one over the other, think about how they can work together to help improve your overall search marketing strategy.

1. Increased Visibility

One of the major benefits of implementing both paid and organic search efforts is the added exposure on the search engine results page. Dominating the paid and organic search results will greatly increase traffic and give the impression that you’re an established, credible presence providing thought leadership in your particular market.

2. Shared Keyword Data

Simultaneously investing in organic and paid search gives you double the data to analyze. Determine which paid keywords have the highest conversion rate, and use that data to signal your SEO efforts. Conversely, identify your top performing organic keywords and implement them into your PPC strategy.

3. Test Organic Keywords with PPC

You want to rank organically for a certain set of keywords, but have no idea how they will perform. PPC ads are a great way to refine your organic keyword strategy. As your long term organic keyword strategy evolves, test the conversion rates of the words you want to rank for organically with PPC ads. You’ll get near immediate feedback on the effectiveness of the organic keywords you’re after, and can fine tune your strategy accordingly.

4. Use Best Performing PPC Ad Copy to inform Organic Content Strategy

What works for PPC often works for SEO. By determining which PPC ads result in the most conversions, you’ll have a good idea how to create title tags, meta descriptions and content for the pages that you want to rank for organically. The benefit of using PPC ads to test attributes is the immediacy of the results. You’ll know pretty quickly what works and what doesn’t, while organically testing titles and metas can take months.

5. Use Site Search to inform PPC Keywords

The main goal of PPC advertising is to figure out which keywords your customers use to find your product or service. Using data gathered from your website’s site search can give you valuable insights into your customers’ needs and search habits.

6. Identify Top Converting Paid Keywords with Low SEO Visibility

Let’s say you’ve got a paid search keyword that has a very high conversion rate, but is also very competitive, meaning that it has a higher cost per click. If that same keyword has low, or no visibility in organic search, taget it in your SEO strategy. Knowing that it converts well, targeting it on the organic side will allow for your paid search funds to be reallocated to lower cost keywords. Your PPC data can often help you identify the low hanging fruit, and help you optimize your organic search efforts.

7. Landing Page Strategy

Paid search marketers often think about landing pages almost exclusively in terms of conversions. SEO marketers think about landing pages in terms of relevancy and search engine ranking. By combining the two approaches, you should end up with the perfect landing page – one that ranks highly, is relevant and converts. When creating your landing pages, wear both your PPC and SEO hats.

PPC is always a great space to test out new ideas. Without spending a lot of money you can gather very specific, detailed data that can not only help improve your overall search efforts moving forward, but also provide you with data about keywords and landing pages. Knowing which keywords your ideal audience searches for, and which ones convert, you can target them in your orgnic search and content strategy to generate long-term, qualified organic traffic. Understanding not only differences between PPC and SEO, but how they can be effectively used to work together as part of your overall search marketing strategy is essential to achieve the best possible results.

Are your PPC and SEO efforts working together? Having trouble achieving your search engine marketing goals? Contact us today, we’d love to help.

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Categories: Digital Marketing

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08 Jan

The Importance of Conversion Tracking in Google AdWords

by: Jason Faber No Comments

Often times we see companies running Google AdWords campaigns blindly. They set up their campaigns, determine keywords, decide on a budget and hit go. Then they “track” the results. They look at impressions, clicks and cost – and then hop over to Google Analytics to look at their increase in overall traffic. And look, they sold a few more items this week. They put A and B together to determine that yes, the ads are working.

There is so much wrong with this way of thinking.

We call this the billboard strategy. Tim Hortons puts up a billboard for their newest menu item, raspberry scones. They then count the number of cars that drive by the billboard in a week, and then compare it to the increase in scone sales in that region. A little bit of misguided math later, they determine the healthy ROI of their billboard ads. Suffice to say, this is flawed.

Intel over Instinct
These are words to live by. We live in a world where we have tools and data at our finger tips that will tell us exactly what is happening with our online efforts. Instead of jumping to conclusions about what you think is happening, why not use this data to determine the true meaning and value of your efforts?

What is your conversion?
The first thing you need to determine is what your conversion is. What are your ads trying to accomplish? For some, it is the sale of a product on their website. For others, it’s the download of a white paper, signup for a newsletter or application to a job posting. Whatever your conversion is, it is important that it is attainable and clearly defined.

Tracking your conversions
Google AdWords offers a free tool called Conversion Tracking that shows you what happens after your ad is clicked on. Did the user follow through with a conversion? By tracking your conversions you will be able to improve your AdWords campaigns by determining which ads, keywords and campaigns convert the best. Sometimes the keywords that cost you the least convert the best. Sometimes not. But by implementing conversion tracking into your AdWords campaigns, you will know. You will have the intel, and will not have to rely on your instinct.

Example
You own a website that sells athletic gear and you’re currently running an AdWords campaign for a high end running shoes, where a conversion occurs when a user buys a pair of shoes on your site. After a purchase is completed, the user is brought to your “Thank you” page. This is your conversion page, as only visitors that bought something will end up here.

As a marketer, you want to know if the keyword “long distance running shoes” or “marathon running shoes” leads to more sales. By implementing conversion tracking on this page, you will be able to track which keyword is the most effective. As you let data accrue, you’ll quickly see that while “long distance running shoes” sends a good deal of traffic to your site, a very small amount of those visitors convert. However, visitors that arrive via the keyword “marathon running shoes” purchase very frequently. What do you do? You invest less is “long distance running shoes”, putting more emphasis on “marathon running shoes.” You use intel over instinct. You become a smarter marketer.

Are you using conversion tracking? You should be. Not only will it help you determine the value of your ads and keywords, but it will also help you optimize your AdWords campaigns for conversions, improving your ROI. Implementing conversion tracking involves a little bit of  proactivity and the addition of a small snippet of HTML code to your conversion page.

Need assistance? Our team of Google AdWords certified individuals can help bring your Google AdWords campaign to the next level. Contact us today.

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Categories: Digital Marketing, E-Commerce, Web Analytics

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18 Dec

Celebrating the Bicentennial of the War of 1812 Online

by: Andrew 1 Comment

The 200th anniversary of the War of 1812 is the perfect time for Canadians to re-examine a pivotal moment in our national history. We’re proud to commemorate this historic event by launching a new online exhibition with the Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation, which operates the Canadian War Museum.

bv02 and the Canadian War Museum worked together to create a virtual extension of the in-gallery experience, currently housed at warmuseum.ca/war-of-1812/. This virtual exhibition, which will accompany the travelling version of the exhibition, will bring the perspectives and history of the War of 1812 to Canadians from coast to coast.

““We are delighted that anyone across Canada and around the world can now enjoy this fascinating and thought-provoking portrait of the War of 1812,” said James Whitham, Director General of the Canadian War Museum. “By learning about the motivations, aspirations and experiences of the four main participants, museum-goers as well as online visitors gain a richer, deeper understanding of this historical conflict that helped shape Canada as a nation.”

The exhibition, including its online component, were featured in an article and a blog post from the Ottawa Citizen last week.

The team at bv02 is once again grateful to have this opportunity to work one with one of Canada’s amazing museums and cultural institutions. The preservation of Canada’s culture online is a core value to many of the team members, which is reflected in the projects we choose to collaborate on. Bringing education about and access to culture to Canadians is what drives us. The Bicentennial of the War of 1812 online is just one more example of how we are supporting and engaging Canada’s community around the arts and culture.

To find out more about our work with cultural institutions, see our recent cultural case studies.

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Categories: Web, Web Development, Website Design, bv02 Clients

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17 Dec

Renting vs. Owning: with digital content, we’re all renting.

by: Andrew No Comments

Recently, there have been several discussions about the difference between services like Netflix and Rdio, that let you “rent” content from their library, and iTunes, which lets you “buy” content.  However, thanks to digital rights management (DRM) these conversations are both arguing the same point.

When it comes to digital content, we’re all renting.

Andrew Milne on Digital Rights Management from bv02 on Vimeo.

How can this be?  Well, in recent months, questions have been raised about what users can do with digital material they’ve “purchased” via platforms like iTunes.  Can they resell a digital song, the same way they would resell a physical copy?  Can they leave the song to someone in their will?  The answer, it turns out, is likely no.

iTunes created this idea of buying digital content, and made us all feel comfortable with our purchase: a purchase that bought us a personal license to the digital rights to a piece of content, with very broad terms.  Want to play the music on a different device?  Sure, no problem.  But can you leave that digital content to someone in your will?  No.

So what then becomes of digital goods that ostensibly have the same content as physical goods?  A digital album contains the same music as a CD, but when we purchase the digital copy, we can’t resell it or transfer ownership.  Can you imagine the resell market for goods that don’t depreciate after you’ve used them, and are identical to the originals, which are still on sale?  There’s a good reason DRM will try to prevent this.

The issue of renting vs. owning digital content hasn’t yet been significantly addressed in the realm of public opinion.  When everyone realizes that DRM creates a rental model out of what we had assumed was an ownership system, that’s when platforms like Netflix and Rdio will really take off.  They’re upfront about the rental system, but they offer a much wider selection of content, and it’s generally a seamless experience across all of your devices.

The only problem here is that we’re all so used to owning content: being able to stack it, store it and resell it, if we want to.  Once we move past the notion of ownership with our digital content,  we’ll change how we access content, how much of it we have access to and the entire business model around DRM content.

This is applicable to the role we play as consumers of content, but also to the role some of us play as producers and distributors of content.  All of our clients, including the ones in education and culture, deal with extremely valuable content every day: new and existing academic knowledge, valuable cultural artifacts and more.  Rights management as it applies to these types of content is well understood in the traditional sense, but digital rights management will emerge as a new challenge in the coming years.

Businesses and industries that deal with online content in any form – so, all businesses and industries – need to be thinking about how DRM will impact them.  And the next step?  How DRM will work with mobile experiences.  If you haven’t considered this as it relates to your content, the time to start planning is now.  I look forward to having a conversation about this with you.

Here are some links that provide an excellent overview of the current issues emerging with DRM as it exists today.  These are the conversations that will drive change in the digital content space in the next year – take a look and let me know what you think.

A whitepaper from Harvard about how DRM is restricting access to educational material
The Canadian Heritage Information Network’s guide to DRM for museums
PaidContent’s take on the upcoming battles in the DRM space

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Categories: Digital Arts, New Media, Web, bv02 Clients, technology

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