Entries Tagged 'Big Ideas'

The success of a website is largely impacted by the process used to create it. After all, an effective website requires the proper understanding of the audience, competitive analysis, strategy, and architecture in addition to its aesthetic and functional components. One hot trend right now in the world of web design is agile development, which promises a fast, yet effective approach to creating websites.

Agile development, sometimes referred to as “scrum” or “rapid prototyping,” is a development method that allows for the best possible solution within a set time frame.  It allows for an evolution of the project through a recurring process of rapid team and user feedback.  Essentially what that means is that agile development is a process of continuous review and recommendation by both the client and developers. Read On

Why Presenting Your Call to Action is Like Asking for an Airline Upgrade

You’ve been in this situation before. Your flight is delayed and you’re now scheduled to arrive at your layover destination 4 minutes before your next plane is supposed to take off. To make matters worse you’re seated toward the back of a large plane and it’s going to take you an extra 20 minutes to get off the aircraft.

This happened to me a few weeks ago and while it wasn’t the first time I’d been in this situation, it was the first time that I asked a special favor of the airline- to move me to a seat closer to the front of the plane so that I could get off more quickly. After a patient 45 minutes in line, I made this request to the woman working at the gate and she exclaimed, “that’s the easiest thing I’ve been asked all day, I’ll put you in first class!” Lately, I’ve been finding that often times, it’s amazing what you get when you just ask. Now, I know what you’re thinking- how does this relate to my website? Read On

Over the past two years The Tribune filed bankruptcy, Gannet cut 3,000 jobs, and the Washington Post announced “major changes underway.” With all these changes, will newspapers (either print or online) still be around in ten years or will we get all of our news from social media, blogs, and sites like wikipedia?

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Location-based social networking is a trend that we’ve seen steadily growing for a while, but seems to have really taken off for businesses just recently. Location-based social networking (LBSN) connects users’ offline activities to the digital world, generally by enabling users to “check-in” at different locations, although each one works differently. This facilitates social interactions, offline get togethers, and recommendations about places, brands, and products. Over just the last few weeks, location-based social networks have created some incredible opportunities for both consumer brands and non-profits. Getting excited yet?

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For companies that need to collect data on their consumers, the most efficient way of conducting market research is often through online surveys due to their low cost and time-sensitive nature. There are a number of ways to do this including soliciting survey responses through e-mail like New England Coffee, printing URLs and codes on receipts in-store like Old Navy, using a third-party service like e-miles, or simply prompting site visitors to take a quick survey. One of the best examples I’ve seen of the latter is a recent effort by Hulu.

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The Olympic Games that is. Over the past 12 days, billions (that’s right, billions, with a B) of people from around the globe have watched the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. As with every Olympic Games, we’ve seen victory, defeat, heartbreak, and scandal. What’s different about the Vancouver Games is the way we’ve watched them. This year’s Games have been watched through more types of media than ever before. And at Boston Interactive, we’re fascinated by how users access media and how the interactive world can extend beyond our computer screens and into our TVs, phones, iPods, Kindles, microwaves, electric toothbrushes, etc. So I couldn’t help but investigate how people around the world are watching the Games.

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