Advertising Trends for 2021

We can all breathe a collective sigh of relief: 2020 is over. About the best thing that can be said for 2020 is that she found her paramour, Satan. That spot, from Match.com, resonated with people because it did seem like a nightmare year and the Dark Lord was taking selfies in front of dumpster-fires while the rest of us huddled in our apartments. The upheavals of 2020 changed digital advertising — and not just in the sense that creative agencies worldwide were all working on the same cliche-of-the-century campaign: “in these uncertain times.”

No, 2020 pushed marketers to find new audiences in virtual channels. Companies reckoned with their intensifying proximity to politics. Consumer habits lurched within an economy that kept start-stopping in response to COVID safety measures. And through the smoldering haze of Lucifer and Lady Apocalypse’s love persisted innovations in digital marketing years in the making, contributing to the forecast that Jacob Tyler is calling here and now for the trends in advertising that lie ahead in 2021.

Thinking Virtual

Advertisers find audiences in their preferred channels, and our preferred channels are now more virtual than ever, since 2020 was the year that reality became virtual reality. Consumers will continue to quarantine through 2021, so they’ll want to go to virtual trade shows and virtual annual events, join online communities and download live streaming services. Yes, we’re all pushing through Zoom fatigue and hoping unmasked human interaction resumes on the sunny side of this century. But already it seems as if the days of the webinar — where the authorities on a subject present to their viewers — are numbered.

In its stead, we’ll see remote events and digital gatherings where hundreds or even thousands of people (or their beaming avatars) meet, network, and Q&A with the experts. The communications ecosystem has been reshaped, and we are interacting from around a globe that seems to have shrunk and also gotten much larger all at once.

Taking a Stand

As you may have noticed, the political climate of the US is (to put it mildly) charged. Similar dynamics are roiling other countries, as well, and since many brands are global, businesses have discovered that their response to polemics worldwide impacts their bottom line. Oatly, HSBC, L’Oreal, Soul Cycle, Jo Malone — these are all brands that, in 2020, consumers #cancelled. That doesn’t mean they’re out of business, but it does mean their business is effectively off-limits to many once-prospective clients because of a bevy of different factors. (According to one study, for instance, 29% of consumers are willing to switch brands if those brands don’t show enough diversity.)

Debate the merits of the cancel all you wish, but the underlying reasons for it trace back to issues once thought more or less outside the bailiwick of advertising: political association, accusations of racism, ties to unsavory businesses. Perhaps never before has PR been such a tightrope act, so it’s no wonder some brands are steering away from controversy altogether. Other brands, however, are embracing the polarization with their own “blanding backlash.” Staking a position amid all the lightning-rod issues, they’re paddling against what sometimes feels like a societal drift toward homogeneity and sameness.

What will prove to be the best crisis comms playbook for the near future? Only 2021 will tell.

Optimizing for People

Even before COVID, isolation was a hallmark feature of 21st century life — partly a result of the sensation a lot of us have that we’re beetling through mazes of automated inauthenticity. As a consequence, what many consumers crave when they interact with a brand is to feel like a human is somewhere on the other side of the digital marketing strategy.

Beyond just embracing the trend toward creating content that sounds relatable, brands will also seek out conversations with followers in 2021, responding to comments on their social channels and adopting a many-to-many model of communication (rather than assuming We the Business are addressing you the consumer). Remember: Isolation. People want to feel courted and listened to. And to that end, we’ll see brands infuse their content with a spirit of cultural inclusivity. The hitch? Because of how siloed consumer segments are today, brands may have to pick which culture(s) they speak to. But that’s a challenge they’ll likely learn to be even savvier about as this year unfolds.

Personalizing the Data Economy

With all that said about people just being people, today’s iteration of the Bernbach-Ogilvy schism in advertising has become a battle waged between those who think you should talk to your audience like humans, and those who think you should talk to your audience like humans … through data insights and algorithm-based feeds.

Here’s the case for the machine learning camp: Sure, personalized content is neighborly and all, but responding to every single comment on a brand’s social media is exhausting, and well nigh impossible. Isn’t it better to at least reach people with email campaigns rather than (metaphorical) notes handwritten on stationery?

Think of an ad for a grill served to your phone right after you’ve texted your partner, “Let’s get a grill this summer.” That may feel invasive to some, but it’ll come across as time-saving to others. And the smarter the AI, the more interactive the content, engaging customers with polls and contests and giveaways. Don’t think of data marketing as a self-checkout kiosk — rather, it’s a series of tools that tailor campaigns to customers based on their preferences.

Or so the argument goes.

Going Green

“Sustainability” transcends simple trendiness because its entire premise is future-oriented, and we’re living through the effects of climate change every day. We did mention firebrand issues, didn’t we? Well, environmentalism is one of the fieriest, with swaths of California and Australia erupting into flames, back-to-back US administrations hopping in and out of the Paris Agreement, and businesses shifting their operations and messaging to address the threats of global warming. With studies showing that 81% of consumers believe companies should do their part in helping the environment, eco-friendly brands will seem even friendlier this year, especially as we navigate the perils of a world where we’ve all but trapped ourselves inside our own carbon emissions.

Forecasting trends in digital advertising is an uncertain science, at best, but it’s also not the same as placing bets or guessing at predictions. Rather, it’s an effort to analyze markets, listen to what customers are saying, and shape tools for businesses that need to anticipate how consumer behavior will pattern itself in coming years. No one can peer into the future — much less know when Satan will find his soulmate — but with some attention to the forces reinventing our culture, you can act on (rather than react to) the changes within your industry.

9 Ways to Boost Your SEO

When was the last time you ventured past the first page of a Google search? Unless WebMD has freaked you out — along with the rest of us — and you’re clicking deeper and deeper to make sure your papercut won’t give you typhus, you probably just pop a question in the search bar and hit the first link that appears. If that’s the case, then you’re among the 75% of users who never dig beyond the first page of a search.

Which makes sense: People are lambasted with choices these days, and to avoid decision paralysis, our minds tend to scramble for a single answer. That’s why a menu with five dishes seems more svelte than a menu of five pages. If you’re a business, you want your site to be the first option on the menu. And the way to get there? Search engine optimization, or SEO. Here are nine SEO techniques that can help buoy your site to the top of the Google Machine.

Anticipate Why People Come to Your Site

Search engines are (to a large extent) in the business of finding answers for people. Type in “Best Wines to Buy,” and Google will list pages of wine shops and purchase options. Now type in “Awesome Vineyards 2021,” and you’ll get a spate of world’s-best-wineries sites and tour schedules. So ask yourself: What do you want people to do on your site? (Hire you? Apply for a job? Read your favorite recipe?) Tailor your content so that search engines identify which questions you’re answering and how their users will benefit from finding you.

Value Your UX

Enticing visitors to click through your site enhances your SEO, because Google recognizes that your pages are useful for its customers. So make your UX clear and navigable. Intersperse text with images and videos, chunk up your layouts with H1-H2-H3 header tags, and stay open to using white space (which calms the eye and makes content more readable). And never, under any circumstances, use popups. Just … no, people. No.

Prize Quality Over Quantity

To get noticed online, you’ll want to push out content optimized with keywords, but Google penalizes you for keyword stuffing, in part because the average Googler will stay on sites that feel timely and smart longer than they will on sites that read like a robot wrote them. Some studies also indicate that long-form articles (over 3,000 words) attract more traffic and shares than smaller articles (between 901–1,200 words). So feel free to blast on, but keep it fresh.

Optimize, Optimize, Optimize!

We all know writing with keywords optimizes your copy, but images can boost your SEO, as well. Images that are too large drag down a page’s loading time, so whenever possible, resize or compress them. Save photos as JPEGs and line art or text-heavy images as PNGs. And add in alt tags (or “alt attributes”) into the code on the back-end of those images, which helps browsers find your site and also satisfies a number of accessibility requirements.

Be the Strongest Link

SEO agencies will advise you to link your content to external articles, but don’t discount the value of internal links, either. If you audit your site’s information hierarchy, you may find that some pages are viewed more often than others. Linking the oft-viewed pages to less-viewed pages will flow traffic to those neglected child-pages, helping Google discover and crawl them. That, in turn, improves the SEO of your site as a whole.

Play Tag

Write title tags and meta descriptions in the back-end of your site. Title tags are the headings of a page, and meta descriptions are text that appear in a search below those headings. Imagine that you’re writing for the “Venues” page of a state park. “Venues | State Park” is the title tag, while your meta description should be phrased like a CTA. (“Rent our venues at your state park …”) Together, title tags and meta descriptions are behind-the-scenes heroes vying for Google’s attention when someone types in, “Where can I rent venues at my state park?”

Go Niche

Around 4.5 billion people currently have access to the internet, so how do you carve out your own space online? You find a niche. You like gardening, but so do millions of other people, so you focus on how to grow orchids in a cold climate. You love sports, but so do the rest of us, so your site covers the latest in chess boxing or underwater hockey. You — well, you get the point. Hone in on the thing that enough people care about but not enough people talk about and build your content strategy around providing answers in that space.

Jump in the Conversation

Remember how we said search engines find answers for people? As any SEO agency will tell you, the people with the answers are often referred to as “authorities.” You can establish your authority through blogging or linking to other authorities, but you can also find a Q&A site like Quora and answer questions there. Airing your opinion too often might get weird, but giving a real explanation now and again and linking back to your site — when it’s warranted — tells search engines that you’re a reliable source within the cosmos of information floating online.

Nab an Interview

We get it — convincing someone to interview you is about as easy as landing an interview at your dream job. (In other words, not very.) So you may as well start your hustle now, because interviews operate like SEO word-of-mouth and augment your site’s visibility. Email bloggers to see if they want to chat. Talk to your buddy’s buddy who’s got a podcast. Getting on the talk-circuit in your field is bound to happen if you plug away at it long enough.

Google is Goliath. But that Goliath would collapse if it didn’t get us the answers we need — otherwise, we’d hop over to competitors like Yahoo! or Bing. You can increase your chances of ranking in all these search engines if you follow the tips above, but think through the reason people are coming to your site in the first place. We’ve been in the game for a minute now, and we’ve learned at least one thing along the way: The ultimate optimization is being useful to your audience. Do that, and you’re halfway to being discovered.

A Checklist to Build the Perfect Website

Take a good look at your car. ‘So what?’ you’re thinking. ‘It’s just a car.’ Well, according to some estimates, the average car is made up of 30,000 parts. You don’t think about all the gears and pipes and turbo air intakes hidden within each model, because engineers have put it together so seamlessly that it just looks like one unit to you — a singular “car.” The same goes for any decent website, which is composed of hundreds of decisions stitched into one integrated layout. The better it’s been built, the simpler it looks.

Don’t be fooled though—building the perfect website requires crossing off a lengthy checklist of to-do’s. Every web design agency has their own schedule of planning and executing a site build, but here’s one we suggest you follow.

Set a Budget

How much does a website cost? How long is a piece of string? A freelance designer can make a DIY brochure site to showcase their portfolio and get everything they need out of it. Whereas a business that wants to track a donation form, build a member login portal, catalog an interactive shopping matrix — yeah, you should probably opt for the DIFM (do-it-for-me) route and benefit from a web development company’s expertise. Added functionality always costs more, so determine which site features you need and how many you’re able to pay for.

Register a Domain Name

Whether you’re going with a free Wix template or shelling out $100,000+ for a site, no one will be able to appreciate it if you don’t claim a domain name, which is basically your address on the internet and costs around $10–20. Check out Domain.com or GoDaddy to see if the domain you want is available, but don’t be surprised if it’s not. (After all, the internet is a star cluster of two billion websites — 400 million of which are active, but who’s counting?) So if the domain you want is taken, ask the web design agency you hired which name they recommend. Tempting as it is to get creative or quirky here, you’ll want your URL to be as similar as possible to the name of your business so prospective customers can find you.

Value the UX

One reason to hire a web design agency is that they’re staffed with UX (or “user experience”) designers. These talented folks are digital artists who keep the experience of their audience top of mind as they create a website design, which should incorporate a color palette and a copy .doc into modules that solve a different problem on each page. The “Donate” page drives visitors to, well, donate. The “About Us” page tells the company story. The “Become a Member” page touts the perks of membership. If all that sounds intuitive, that’s because the UX designer has made the ride feel effortless, so your visitors further your business goals with each click they make on your site.

Make Your Content King

Web copy needs to get to the point. Sure, you want your writing to lure visitors in, but don’t wax poetic. Front-load your copy with the most relevant info about your business: email, address, a few lines about what you do. Use the same tack with social posts and paid advertising — content that people like to snack on and that directs traffic back to your site. With a blog or a newsletter, consistency is key. Publish on the reg to drum up an audience. Optimize it with keywords, and then link out to related blogs and articles. All those strategies impart upon your work enough authority to make it rank higher in Google searches. (Because, really, when was the last time you clicked past the first page of a Google search?)

Ship It!

At long last, the site is finished. Oh, happy day. You’ve bought your domain. You’ve designed your layouts. You’re excited about revving up your content initiative. You’ve been working on this thing for months and you’re ready for it to be over. We understand — but we insist you do some last-minute QC. Proof the copy, triple-check that the links work, write metadata into the CMS, and set up 301 redirects to steer visitors familiar with your old site toward your new site.

One final thing: Plug in Google Analytics to track how many people are viewing your domain, where they’re coming from, and how long they’re staying. (These insights give you a bird’s-eye perspective of your web performance.) Take a breather. And then take the wheel: Hit launch, post about it on Facebook, and congratulate yourself on assembling a sleek and sexy site.

How Branding Can Build Better Customer Value

How Branding Can Build Better Customer Value

Businesses, for your own survival, remember this: Customers today have more choices than ever before. Drop into any grocery store and you’ll have to decide between, at minimum, 12 different brands — not bags, but brands — of rice. So to distinguish yourself from all the other metaphorical bags of rice on the shelf, your branding needs to demonstrate a record of reliability. In a word, you have to show that your business builds customer value.

CV=(B-C)

See that equation up there? That’s a rough-and-ready definition of customer value: The benefit of a product minus the cost. You’ve just bought a bag of scrumptious basmati rice for $4. Are you satisfied with it? You are? Then bask in the glow of high customer value. That purchase is one tesserae of the mosaic known as “brand equity,” or the social value of a brand. Calculating brand equity can get tricky, because it’s not based entirely on market capitalization, but also on intangibles like dependability. Once people trust you, they may be willing to pay more for your product if they enjoy the perks of your branding. Some marketers argue that branding benefits customers in at least three ways: making their lives easier, moving or inspiring them, or reinforcing their beliefs and bottom lines. Let’s go over each one.

Ease and Convenience

No matter how glitzy your brand design gets, many successful companies still follow the same customer service principles as Mom and Pop: They solve problems. Need a credit card? Call Visa. Want a bassinet delivered? Log onto Amazon. Gotta write a content article about how branding builds customer value? Open your Macbook Air.

Visa and Amazon and Apple have thrived in part because they provide “convenient customer service,” which is mostly a euphemism for easing people’s apprehensions or fears. Take a more visceral example: A tree branch falls on your roof and a home repair business removes it and patches up the damage before a hailstorm sets in. All that anxiety welling up inside you about replacing rotted wood and soaked furniture goes away, courtesy of this company. Afterwards, you’ll probably call them again — or even buy hammers and wood chippers from them, if they’re selling. Why, you ask? Because you trust their brand.

Inspiration and Identity

Brands don’t just fix problems for us. They also welcome us into the club. Remember the last time you went into the Mac store? You felt like you were entering a spaceship. Your floor was the Cloud. Everything looked like a vision from twenty years in the future. The glowing white layout enticed you — and your pocketbook. At a Mac store, you’re paying for a 27″ monitor with a desktop shot of Catalina Island, yes, but you’re also meshing your identity with the aura of simplicity and sophistication that you’re nimbused in. What’s the customer value of being enticed? Brand agencies will debate this point endlessly, but one could argue that, in Apple’s case, it currently amounts to $241 billion, making Apple a giant among other global tech giants today, with a near-perfect brand value rating of AAA.

Beliefs and Bottom Lines

Consumers have rewarded Apple with billions of their hard- (or otherwise-) earned dollars, in part because Apple enriches them right back. Your Macbook Air will cost you at least $1,000, but the ease with which it lets you work from anywhere or plug into LinkedIn communities will lead you to opportunities that recoup that initial fee in no time. Brands also typically find that they make more when they spend on side-projects that make their business look good. Take this page from Apple’s site: “How Apple Volunteers are Helping Transform Lives.” The more world-weary among us might point out that do-gooder companies give off a whiff of paradox, but this article does a convincing job highlighting how Apple employees help out at food banks or teach coding to high school students. The more Apple gives back, the better people feel about buying from them, especially when their outreach programs reinforce values that those consumers already hold.

A well-thought-out brand isn’t just a shinier logo on a bag of rice. Rather, it’s the culmination of all the research you’ve done on your customers — the surveys they filled out, the comments they left on Yelp!, the Google Analytics you pored over. Listen to what they’re saying. Track their spending patterns and adjust your pricing (if advisable). Segment off the clients you want to attract, then position your brand so that it speaks to them. A company without branding in today’s market has pretty much told their customers that they aren’t interested in providing value for them, which can get costly. After all, your very survival may depend on it.

How Branding Affects Consumer Behavior

Some people believe we’re living in the golden age of branding. But what does that mean? Before “branding” became an industry term, it referred to the process of scorching livestock with a heated poker to identify which animals belonged to which owners. Hence the metaphor: Branding helps companies make their mark in a field already cluttered with competition. Yes, branding is copy and design, but at its core is an emotional appeal — and the more authentic that appeal, the more effective the marketing. So how do companies lay claim to consumers’ attention through their branding? Read on to find out.

Project an Image

Often the decision to make a purchase stems from psychological motivations, rather than a straight X’s-and-O’s calculus. You can get Derrick Rose basketball shoes from Adidas for $120, but if you’re a LeBron James fan, you’ll probably shell out $200 to Nike to don his line of footwear. Why? Because, on some level, you feel like you’re stepping into the King’s shoes whenever you lace up your LeBrons. Brands allow consumers to identify with or suit up as their heroes, and consumers reward those brands richly for that feeling of empowerment.

Establish Familiarity

Research indicates that six out of ten consumers prefer buying products from brands that are familiar to them. Which makes sense: We network through our connections, we buy property in areas we feel safe in, and we buy things from companies who have shown their value to us already. Consider coming across a package of bread on an empty shelf in the store. You’re probably not going to pick it up — who knows why it’s been tossed aside? Now imagine that loaf has the Sara Lee logo on it. You might still inspect it, but at least you know that a multinational company guarantees its quality. For all our carping about corporations, that logo will likely reassure a lot of people that the bread is edible and safe (and only 45 calories). In other words, branding is a seal of approval that we consumers learn to trust.

Instill Loyalty

Even if you trust Sara Lee, you might trust a bevy of other global bread-brands as well. All their brand designs may be distinct, but they need something else to vie for your attention — and that “something” could have nothing to do with the product they’re selling. Instead, they could project a good-guy image because they pay a minimum wage of $70,000. Or, like KFC, they could launch the “I Love You, Colonel Sanders! Dating Simulator,” a campaign intended to inject sex appeal into a brand ambassador who consumers today may have difficulty engaging with, skeptical as we are of any figure that still nods to antebellum plantation motifs.

Too much of a disconnect between what’s sold and what’s said can be fodder for cynicism — and with reason. When Starbucks teams up with the Wounded Warrior Project, you’ve got to wonder: What does this have to do with coffee? Corporate flirtations with social commentary may strike consumers as ploys to grab their attention and empty their pockets, and, as in the case of Starbucks’ anti-racism initiative, face backlash. Yet Ben & Jerry’s earned praise for a similar campaign. How people react to brand positions can sometimes be guesswork, but the more authentic those positions seem to us, the more likely we’ll stay loyal to them.

Brand The Brand

In a way, branding is a feedback loop that influences company decisions nearly as much as it drives consumer behavior. Since what’s said is as important as what’s sold, what’s said about a business can sway its profits. According to the Better Business Bureau, 88% of consumers read up to 10 reviews before they trust a business. So prospective customers are likely to skip on companies with negative reviews and call their competitors whose Yelp! pages gleam with compliments. Similarly, when a CEO makes an inappropriate comment during an internal call, the brand loyalty is compromised and the CEO will probably resign. Whereas titans of industry were once throned at the head of the board, now they, too, are subject to how consumers relate to the brand position they helped forge.

As a brand agency, we get it — all this talk about branding makes it seem like companies should adopt values and bullhorn beliefs just to drum up awareness about themselves. Yet we believe branding is not a gussied-up facsimile of the real thing. Quite the opposite: Branding is the most fundamental insight about your business, the drilled-down core that marks you as you. We could blast on, because we love talking about brands, but let’s cut to the chase: Wanna talk about yours?

How to Build Landing Pages that Convert

Not all landing pages are created equal. “Static page,” “destination page,” “lead capture page,” “single property page” — these are all names for the coveted landing page, which is a web page generally set up to promote an offer. The goal of said landing page is to lure visitors into the tractor-beam of your marketing strategy: First you get them in the sales funnel, then you guide them through the suite of services your business provides. Simple enough.

Except here’s the rub: Prospective clients can crash-land on a landing page and not “convert” — that is, act on the deal being advertised. The average conversion rate on a landing page is 2.35%. The top quarter of companies enjoy conversion rates north of 5%, while a rate higher than 11% is bragging rights. So how do you build landing pages that convert in the 5–11%+ range? That question has befuddled many a marketer and agency, but here are a few tips we’ve learned along the way.

Be Transparent

“Get them in the nose!” That’s an old newspaperman’s line about blasting the reader with the most important information in the first few sentences, and the same advice applies to landing pages. Figure out your core message and slap it in the header so your audience knows what the landing page wants them to do. Enter a raffle to win a truck, buy an all-inclusive trip to Kauai, take a virtual tour of a senior living community — whatever the conversion is, hone in on it and make it clear why your visitors are here in the first place.

Show, Don’t Tell

Whatever you’re selling, show it. If you’re a vineyard, don’t just bullet out the perks of being a member. Include pictures of bottles of cab sauv and pebbled courtyards where you can get pleasantly snockered on those bottles. Feature testimonials from happy customers — but make sure they’re real (people catch on). Add in case studies, which fulfill much the same purpose. And, of course, you must connect with users on an emotional level. “Buy an all-inclusive trip to Kauai” is clear, but an effective landing page design will embed videos of waterfalls pouring through rainforest canopies or work in descriptions of whales singing beneath the waves.

Up Your CTA Game

Another reason you should remove clutter from landing pages is to make sure your CTA is easy to find. Place the CTA above the fold so your audience doesn’t have to unfurl the Dead Sea Scrolls just to get to it. Copywriters, this is not your moment to be clever. Visitors with vision impairments may be clicking around your site with a Screen Reader, which translates on-screen copy into speech. So to make CTAs accessible, keep them informative.

What’s an accessible way to ask a visitor to subscribe to your newsletter? Something like “Subscribe to my newsletter.” If that sounds humdrum, that’s the point: Avoid addy-style puns that confuse the purpose of the page. And include no more than one or two CTAs. Remember, simplicity means sales.

Boost Your Cred

Landing pages often have forms that ask for a visitor’s name, email, and even credit card information. The more security you can provide, the more likely strangers will cough up the most important data in their lives. Especially if you’re a known quantity, trot out that logo — the Starbucks mermaid, for instance, will stamp considerable trustworthiness onto any landing page (a Starbucks landing page, of course). A data security badge also conveys that you’re legit. And go over your spelling with holy fervor. Nothing kills your cred quite like janky grammar.

Monitor and Optimize

The best landing pages buoy up to the top of Google searches because they’re optimized. To boost your page ranking, incorporate keywords into the headlines and body copy and the metadata in the back-end. Run A/B testing to gauge what’s working and what’s not. Let’s say Option A is performing at a conversion rate of 1%. Embed a new video (or shorten it if it’s over three minutes), swap out the headlines, mix and match the brand colors, and — boom! — you’ve got Option B, which now sports a conversion rate of 10%. Whatever the numbers are, keep tweaking the layout and settings till those numbers trend up, up, up.

Finally, consider adding in additional links or related content that redirect your audience to your larger website or blog. Connecting all your channels lets users extend their journey and find more information about what you do and how to contact you in case they want you to create a landing page for them that’s a cut above the rest.

2020 Website & ADA Compliance Common Asked Questions…

Web accessibility is the practice of ensuring there are no barriers that prevent interaction with, or access to, Websites by people with physical disabilities, situational disabilities, and socio-economic restrictions on bandwidth and speed. When sites are correctly designed, developed and edited, generally all users have equal access to information and functionality.

In 2020 Jacob Tyler, in partnership with AccessiBe, released our automated platform JADA in order to quickly assist our clients Website compliance issues.

Below are our frequently asked platform questions. If you would like to learn more or receive a product demonstration, please reach out to Jeff Tompkins at jeff@jacobtyler.com

How do the disabled use the internet?

People with various disabilities have tools that help them interact with sites. For the blind, there are screen readers which allow them to hear the content on a webpage. For those with motor impairments, adjustments are made so they can navigate websites using only the TAB key or other special implementations. Other adjustments can be as simple as increasing the font-size or adjusting contrast. Our tool allows anyone with any disability to adjust the settings to their hearts’ content until they’re browsing in comfort.

Why do I have to be compliant?

Web accessibility compliance is a requirement that’s been set by the ADA title III and affirmed by the DOJ. Moreover, legal implications aside, people living with disabilities make up between 20-25% of the global population. This is an enormous market that shouldn’t be cut out of the internet age, and opening up your business to such a large new audience should be beneficial for all.

I tried checking your compliance/compliance via wave/lighthouse/etc and got a whole bunch of errors, why am I not compliant?

First of all, testing for accessibility compliance is done by an accessibility expert and is called an audit. Automated tests are nowhere near being accurate in general. Also, they evaluate your template’s accessibility, whereas JADA doesn’t work on your template. It works on the session.

Still, if you want to test your website by yourself with such tools while using JADA, you can try Wave’s Chrome extension or Google Lighthouse, as they also work on the session. You’ll need to turn on “Accessible Mode” because JADA won’t change anything to your site by default, only when asked to. Our system makes session-based adjustments, catered specifically to the person’s disability and needed adjustments.

Again, I must emphasize that this is not a proper way to check accessibility and these tools often even present false information in order to motivate you to purchase their remediation solution.

In addition, to help you optimize the results using the aforementioned tools, simply look at the errors you are receiving, make adjustments using JADA accordingly, and then run the test again. Given that this is not the proper way to check, whatever result you receive with this method is the best we can do!

Do we need to put in Alt tags and ARIA labels manually?

No, absolutely not! Our AI technology is not only able to identify characters and words, but also to understand context and recognize images, so it’s capable of taking care of all these labels and tags automatically.

What if I already put ALTs or did accessibility work?

That’s great! If you’ve already made changes to make your site more accessible, such as adding ALT tags, our AI will not override your work, as we assume you’ve made those changes for a good reason.

Why is your service so inexpensive? Sounds too good to be true!

In the web accessibility market, most solutions require manual remediation, which entails lots of time and effort of skilled developers and accessibility experts and is very expensive. Our AI cuts out all of that cost by automating the entire analysis and remediation process.

How long from the time Jacob Tyler implements the code until I’m compliant?

This can take up to 48 hours; you’ll see the interface immediately after installation and that solves about 30% of the requirements, but you won’t be fully compliant until up to 48 hours later when you also receive your statement of accessibility that doubles as a certificate of performance. You’ll receive that statement directly to your registered email at the moment you become compliant.

Is there anything that’s not included in the price?

There is one exception to our solution. JADA remediates everything in your codebase, but there are certain elements that aren’t included in the code, like PDFs, videos, and documents (word, excel, ppt) so JADA can’t reach them. Nevertheless, if you have such elements on your site we do offer manual remediation for them, just like other manual services.

Can I have all my subdomains under one subscription/how do you handle subdomains?

We license every domain and subdomain separately. You can have several subdomains under one account, but you need a separate subscription per subdomain. If you have 10 or more subdomains, contact your partnerships manager to understand how best to handle this.

How do you compare to manual entry to your service?

Our competitors have fine solutions, but most provide a manual service. JADA is the only completely automated solution on the market providing full compliance with the WCAG 2.1. Manual remediation is a long process and requires the employment of skilled developers, which is very expensive and doesn’t include the necessary ongoing maintenance. JADA, on the other hand, was developed to be affordable and even scans sites every 24 hours in order to maintain compliance at all times.

Do you indemnify?

In the United States, anyone can be sued for any reason. We cannot prevent someone from suing you, nor can we indemnify you. We do have an intricate process through which we protect thousands of clients from litigation. Would you like me to explain it? Once you have installed JADA, your site will display an accessibility icon, which heads off 90%+ of lawsuits at the pass. If and when someone does approach you with a lawsuit or demand letter, our Accessibility Statement explains the changes that have been made to ensure your site is accessible. This statement can be sent to any legal entity or anyone else who needs clarification on the accessibility level of your site. Finally, in the rare instance that a legal entity has a specific complaint about your site, we have an effective process to handle these, called the Litigation Support Package.

What are the relationships between WCAG, ADA, Section 508 etc? What do I have to abide by?

The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) issued the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). Thereafter, several governments adopted these guidelines into their legislations. Section 508 refers to public companies and government agencies, and directly references the WCAG as the accepted standard in the industry. ADA Title III is relevant for the private sector and refers to accessibility of public spaces. In 2018, the DOJ ruled that websites constitute public accommodations and are required to be equally accessible to people with disabilities. As a result, rulings have consistently cited the WCAG as the accepted standard in the industry. Therefore, if you abide by the WCAG you’re as compliant as possible.

I want more information on those laws, tell me more!

I will start in chronological order so you get a proper understanding of the chronological events that have led to web accessibility: ADA – The Americans with disabilities act became law in 1990 and protects people with disabilities against discrimination. Title III of the ADA refers to accessibility of public accommodations such as stores, restaurants, Hotels, etc.. Section 508 is part of the Rehabilitation Act and was passed in 1998. It requires federal agencies to develop, procure, and use information and communications technology that is accessible to people with disabilities. W3C is the World Wide Web Consortium that developed the WCAG. WCAG 1.0 2.0 2.1 – The web content accessibility guidelines were initially released in 1999, but it wasn’t until 2018 that the DOJ regarded websites as public accommodations. This, in turn, expedited the process of governments adopting the WCAG as the standard to make websites accessible. There are 3 levels of accessibility stated in the WCAG – A, AA, AAA The WCAG 2.1 considers AA as the standard of an accessible website.

How can you prove we’re compliant, do you do an audit?

Our technology scans your entire website for problems and remediates them on the spot. We provide each website using JADA with a Statement of Accessibility that doubles as a certificate of performance and describes all the adjustment made to the site. We also use JADA ACE, our Automated Compliance Expert, to perform a full scan and 15-page downloadable pdf report.

If I get sued, what do you do to help?

If a licensee receives a demand letter and contacts us for assistance, we go through the following process. First, we perform a compliance audit along with two scans: aCe and WAVE. We use two scans because aCe is our own, so a third-party scanner concurring with our results is an added assurance. We will then provide our Accessibility Statement, along with our Suggested Response (a form letter we have used to great effect). We will include with this your Purchase Invoice, a Compliance Overview (to explain to the other party how our tool functions and so on), and a Failures Request Master. The Failures Request Master is a spreadsheet in which a complainant can log and document specific perceived accessibility failures or holes and request review of them. In the vast majority of cases, our licensees do not even receive a response to the Suggested Response.

Do you provide an itemized list or dashboard of accessibility where I can track everything on my site to see if it’s accessible?

We have our own scanner, called ACE (the Automated Compliance Expert) which provides 15-page PDF accessibility reports with relevant code snippets showing accessible and inaccessible elements.

Why can’t you ensure 100% compliance with your solution?

In the vast majority of cases, JADA functions perfectly from the moment of installation. In far less than 1% of cases, coding errors on a site’s source could cause the AI engines to misidentify or not identify various elements, which could lead to accessibility holes. As JADA has no ability to change a site’s source code, it would not be able to correct for this error. That error would, however pop up on an aCe scan, which would inform the site owner of the relevant issue.

Does JADA work on any CMS/system/website?

Yes, JADA can function on any domain capable of accepting Javascript code.

How Do I Check My Site’s Accessibility Level?

While you can of course check sites manually, we have developed a state-of-the-art Automated Compliance Expert, JADA ACE, to check everything in seconds. Just go to ace.accessibe.com and enter the domain you’d like to test in the search bar. You’ll see a full report ready in seconds that will be immediately available as a PDF via email.

What Is A Screen Reader?

A screen reader is a device or piece of software used by people with severe visual impairments or blindness to interact with a computer. Because screen reader users cannot effectively see, the screen reader is designed to “read out” the contents of a website so that they can use it. Some screen readers are physical devices that display the content of a website as braille text, while others are only software and verbally communicate content to the user. Screen readers generally need to be active from the moment the user has activated their computer, because they simply would not be able to operate the computer with a mouse for obvious reasons. While the vast majority of screen reader users are those with either no vision or impaired vision, screen readers are also important for the illiterate and people with certain learning and cognitive disabilities. An example of this would be someone with severe dyslexia who has trouble reading.

How does your AI work?

Our AI scans your entire website and compares its components, widgets, structures and user behavior to thousands of other sites already using our solution. Then, it finds out each and every element’s role. For example, It’ll understand your menus, dropdowns, popups, forms, validations, and all other aspects. Next, it will apply and modify your website’s behavior and HTML code on the fly, when users turn “Accessible Mode” on. It even scans all the images on your site and takes them through object recognition, as well as OCR processes in order to provide ALT tags to the images.

What is the advantage of using JADA’s technology vs. manual remediation?

There are many. A few of the big advantages are: analysis and re-remediation every 24 hours so you always stay compliant, no manual work from the customer side, no need to compromise the site UI or design, websites can be made fully accessible in 48 hours, we provide you with a certification of performance, and of course pricing is significantly more reasonable. How can I be sure your technology will remain compliant, do you check for bugs and update regularly?

We are constantly reviewing the latest updates in regards to web accessibility and implementing them to ensure our clients remain compliant. In addition, our AI rescans each website every 24 hours to keep current with any updates to the site!

Do you collect any data/affect GDPR?

What about GA (google analytics) data? We do not collect any data that would affect your GDPR compliance.

How do you handle i-Frames? If i have content coming from elsewhere can you remediate it?

Because i-frames are not actually code belonging to the domain that JADA is installed on, JADA cannot affect them.

That being said, it is our understanding that it is the responsibility of the owner of the original content the i-frame draws from to make it compliant.

If you have content that is i-framed out on other domains, and JADA is installed in your code, your i-frame will be accessible.

Will your tool slow down my website or affect the regular UI/UX at all?

No, JADA is a session-based tool that adjusts the website on the fly after it’s been fully loaded and rendered. There will be no difference in browsing experience for someone who has not activated any accessibility features.

Do you affect our codebase at all?

No, there’s just a single line of JS code that needs to be implemented in the body of the site, that’s all.

Do you use Cookies?

No, we use local storage that is on the user side, not the server side, which enables us to function without affecting GDPR or storing any user data.

What is Local Storage Local storage is the storage of data on a user’s browser, so as not to transmit personal data.

Can JADA work on a password-protected site?

Yes, JADA works on the session therefore it can work on anything the user has access to. We have what is called a “lazy process” that is deployed after the user enters the password-protected section.

What’s the company policy in terms of data security?

We take data security very seriously, our infrastructure is in San Francisco and managed by Digital Ocean, we have an entire DevOps team dedicated to this issue. On a regular basis, they make attempts to hack the system and otherwise test it in order to ensure the highest level of ongoing security.

How do you trigger accessibility on Mobile Devices?

Just like having a screen reader for a website, a blind person uses assistive technology on their phone at all times. In order to listen to an announcement of a highlighted feature, the user taps one time. To activate that feature the user taps twice. When navigating through a website using a keyboard, the user will use TAB to move forward and Shift + TAB to move backwards throughout the page. For a touchscreen device a user will swipe right to navigate forwards and swipe left to navigate backwards. When using a website that has JADA, you immediately get an announcement to the assistive technology software stating that this website has accessibility adjustments. The user will swipe right and then tap twice in order to activate the screen reader adjustments.

What is an Alt Attribute and why does it matter for accessibility?

An alt attribute is text meant to be displayed in place of media, usually an image. The text is meant to explain or describe the image in the case that it cannot be properly rendered, or in the case of people using screen readers. Without alt attributes, images would not have any text describing them and people might just be told by a screen reader that they are navigating past an image, with no description. This is of course not acceptable, and part of why alt attributes are so important.

What are ARIA labels and why do they matter for accessibility?

ARIA labels are important for accessibility purposes because they label otherwise anonymous html elements. For instance, most people would think there’s no need to label a Facebook or Instagram link/icon because the shape is universally recognizable. That may be true for people who can see. For those who cannot, ARIA labels are needed to describe these icons and elements via a screen reader.

What Laws Do I Need To Comply With?

The ADA, the Rehabilitation Act and other laws exist in the United States to protect the rights of people with disabilities. While there has been debate in recent years as to specific statutes and whether they can be applied to websites, this was all clarified as of 2018 by the Department of Justice (DOJ).

While Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act states that websites must be accessible according to the WCAG, it only applies to government agencies and the large public corporations that work with them. The WCAG, or Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, are developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and are the only internationally recognized set of guidelines for web accessibility. The ADA, however, did not say anything at all about websites, and so people began filing suits related to web accessibility because it was clearly in the spirit of the law, but not the text, that websites should be accessible.

After thousands of these suits had been filed, the DOJ had to make a ruling on the issue. The DOJ stated then that all business websites are considered “places of public accommodations” and therefore must be made accessible to people with disabilities. It’s no different in principle from handicapped parking spaces and restrooms.

While the ADA still doesn’t have WCAG guidelines written into the text explicitly, every US court ruling on this issue, and every plaintiff bringing web accessibility complaints, ask for remediation based on the WCAG.

Outside the United States, there are laws ranging from AODA in Canada to EN 301549 in the EU that stipulate WCAG compliance in order to provide web accessibility. WCAG compliance at the AA level or higher is the best way to ensure that all people regardless of disability can use your website.

Browser Compatibility?

JADA functions with no problems on all modern browsers. You can feel free to use Safari, Firefox, Chrome or any other browser you’d like.

4 tips on Effective Remote Working

Business Hasn’t Shut Down—It’s Just Moved Online

We are living through an event unlike anything we have experienced before. The coronavirus has temporarily upended “normal” life as we know it and thrown a wrench in a lot of business plans—conferences and travel are being cancelled, people are working from home, and toilet paper is now worth more than gold. Much has changed in a short period of time. But here’s the reality—business isn’t shutting down. It’s just moving online.

At Jacob Tyler, we’re primed and ready to help you fill in the gaps created by COVID-19 with an online strategy that will help your business continue to drive leads and revenue during the virus response.

Eventually, this too will pass. In the meantime, we are dedicated to helping our clients seize opportunity in less than opportune circumstances. Give us a call anytime, we’re ready to help (unless you need toilet paper. Can’t help there.)

Working remotely? Here’s how to do it.

At Jacob Tyler, we’ve perfected remote working, as we have been doing it for a few years now. Every business is different, but here are a few things that have worked for us.

4 Tips on Remote Working

It looks like most businesses will be working remote for the next few weeks. At Jacob Tyler, we’ve perfected remote working, as we have been doing it, in part, for a few years now. Since we implemented a hybrid workforce—gathering the best talent from across the country to complement our in-house team—we’ve learned a few things about how to successfully conduct business online. Every business is different, but here are a few things that have worked for us:

Implement Communication Technology

As a creative agency, constant communication is essential to our business. By using instant messaging apps like Slack and videoconferencing platforms like Whereby, we are able to communicate and collaborate even faster than we can in person! In fact, we commonly slack each other when we’re sitting more than 10 feet away in the office. It’s not lazy—it’s efficient.

Kick Things Off with a Huddle

Every morning, we jump on a 15-minute video huddle to give each other a quick rundown of the hot-button issues of the day. We call this meeting our “Daily Dose of Kickass.” You can call yours whatever you like, but it’s a great way to stay connected with your team when in different locations.

Meet with Clients

More often than not, we hold our client meetings via videoconferencing. We have clients spread across the globe, and it’s not always feasible or cost-effective to meet in person. With videoconferencing platforms like Whereby, Zoom and Google Hangouts, you can share documents, execute presentations, and talk to people the same way you would in person.

Keep the Water Cooler Talk Going

Part of the joy of being in the office together is talking about things that don’t involve work. A little personal interaction is good for morale. At JT, we have an internal Slack channel where we share everything from funny memes to pictures of our dogs and kids. It keeps us connected with each other and allows for a little fun in the middle of a busy day.

Want to talk specifics? Give us a call anytime. Need help executing an online strategy for your business? We’re working—remotely.

Jacob Tyler Wins Gold!

Congratulations to Richard Truss for submitting his Fireside Restaurant Ad in the 2020 Graphis Advertising Competition! We always knew the ad was awesome!!

Jacob Tyler’s Solutions to Common Remote Work Complaints. (#3 Is Kinda Controversial)

As a business that’s created a successful hybrid workforce (more about that in this blog post), I wanted to start sharing more about our methods and philosophies regarding remote work. The way I see it, if we can make it work, so can you. So this is the first of many blog posts you’ll see. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Common complaint 1: More productivity comes at the cost of less social bonding.

With 91% of people surveyed expressing that they were more productive outside of the office, it’s no wonder remote work is taking off. But it has to be noted that in the process we’re missing out on some serious bonding opportunities. When you’re in a creative field like we are, you need those bonds to help drive ideas and client results. As a solution to this we use BlueJeans — a video conference product — to help stay connected with each other and our clients (we have a less formal solution for off-the-cuff needs in the next paragraph). You’d be surprised at how well video calls bring people together. You get to see expressions, body language, and emotions. Those are the foundations of strong relationships. Phone calls just don’t cut it. The key here is making sure everyone understands that although you can dial in and turn your video off, we expect your video to be on — unless you’re having a bad hair day and you think you’ll be called out for it like I was once by a remote contractor. : )

Common complaint 2: Communication suffers with remote work.

In Adam Heitzman’s article for Inc. he writes, “A major drawback to remote work is that you can’t walk across the office when you need something”. Well, Adam, that’s right, but if you plan around not having a physical office with all of your staff present, it’s not that hard to overcome. Here are the policies that work for us for both on-site and remote staff.

Be available and flexible most of the core working day. If you’re not going to be around, let your immediate teammates know. Even if one person is in New York and one person is San Diego, there’s still five working hours overlap to collab and communicate.
Use technology that works. As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, technology is our friend. We use Slack and an app that integrates with Slack called Whereby (super cheap and easy) for off-the-cuff group conversations, video calls, and meetings. Highly recommended.
Buy into “over communicating” and hire those who buy into it as well. You know what’s never pissed me off once? A staff member making sure I saw an important email, text, or calendar invite. That goes double for getting clarity on a project or creative direction. The “hey, did you see my email from last night” double check takes less than a minute and saves countless hours if something gets missed. Over. Communicate. Often.

Common complaint 3: Managing people is too hard remotely.

After 20 years of running this business, I can safely say that managing people is hard no matter what, and if someone is not physically present you may have a tougher time. I don’t, because I came up with a sure-fire solution that will probably be seen as controversial (that’s kinda my brand, btw): Don’t hire people that you need to manage. Ok, there you go, see you later. Just kidding. I wouldn’t leave you hanging. What I’m saying is that in my experience and from what others have told me, the primary qualifier of a successful remote work staff is having people who are highly-organized self starters. When you work with people like that you’ll find that managing isn’t an issue. They manage themselves. That doesn’t mean you won’ have to give direction or discuss projects, because you will. At Jacob Tyler, we only hire people with 10 years+ experience for most roles and at least a couple years remote work experience. That’s our policy and it works. Depending on your industry more or less experience could work for you.

“Don’t hire people that you need to manage … the primary qualifier of a successful remote work staff is having people who are highly-organized self starters.”

There you have it. If you have any questions about remote work just hit us up on LinkedIn or Twitter.

-Les