How to Optimize Your Web Copy to Drive Conversions

“Print is dead.” “Don’t quit your day job.” “Yeah, because the money’s in writing.” As a writer, you hear it all your life: You’re doomed. High school counselors, your uncle’s friend in the red sweater-vest at the Christmas party a few years back, even your doctor — everybody around you feels the need to let you know that anyone who writes for a living will end up penniless, curled up in a gutter.

The thing is, they’re not wrong (even if they are exaggerating). Writing is not so much a field as a precarious skill that you enter the job market with at your own peril. At the same time, people need to communicate, and that’s when you hire a writer. Blogs, websites, landing pages, retargeting ads, and other tactics in your digital marketing strategy — we copywriters probably handled the language for all that. But if we didn’t, and you’re wondering how to optimize web copy to drive conversions, here are some tips the writers at Jacob Tyler have written for you.

Stay on Point

The term “writer” got batted around a lot in the paragraphs above, so let’s define terms: Slinging digital marketing copy is often way different than crafting an essay or plotting a novel. Print tends to afford writers more space than digital layouts, which are usually functional or parceled out between web pages. Remember, readers on your site might be clicking between 15 tabs at the same time, and they’re likely to only scan 20% of your page’s content, anyway.

So keep your sentences pithy. Guide your audience to the most relevant info with headers and bold type and bullet points, since people may only be on your site to get an answer (“Should I hire this company for my kitchen remodel? When does this place even open?”). And be consistent. You don’t want to strike a lofty third-person tone on the landing page only to switch to the earnest first-person in the “About Us” section. Maintain the same voice throughout your web copy so users don’t feel like they’ve somehow jumped between those 15 tabs unbeknownst to them.

But What’s the Point?

Let’s return to one of the phrases above: “People may only be on your site to get an answer.” That idea is more pertinent than it may appear. Novels, essays, scripts all give authors the breadth to move characters through countries and centuries, picking up on themes later on that they foreshadowed at the outset — and letting the reader (or viewer) sink into an argument or a narrative. Not so with digital copywriting, which needs to be punchy because it drives toward a CTA. Copywriters, with each page you compose, ask yourself: “What is this accomplishing?”

Are you nudging users to book a resort, enroll in theology school, become a member of a credit union? Craft your content so that it’s smart and fresh, yes, but don’t leave your reader floundering in a sea of pretty descriptions. Effective UX copywriting compels prospective clients to journey further down the funnel, so you should A) have a CTA, and B) make your CTA compelling — and then run A/B testing to make sure it really is driving people to book a resort or enroll in theology school or become a member of a credit union. (Which it is, if you’re wondering. Those are our accounts, and our director of business development would love to tell you all about them.)

Mean What You Say

Even though web copy may be the newest medium in the history of writing, the old verities of how to compose a good sentence still apply to the art of digital marketing: Go heavy on verbs and nouns, light on adjectives and adverbs. Know your grammar, and if you break it, be able to defend it. Read what you’ve written out loud and let your ear guide the phrasing. Be specific — but don’t get prosy with detail. And assume the reader is smarter than you are.

Since web copy does generally hinge on a CTA, copywriters can sometimes trick themselves into taking the attitude that they’re tricking consumers down the funnel. But people know when they’re being talked down to; they sense it if you don’t believe in what you’re saying or selling. So find a way to enter into the copy emotionally. If your client is a nature preserve, conjure up memories of fog raveling fir trees. If your client is a bank, think back to that feeling of security that a customer service rep at your mortgage company gave you when you called about maybe, hopefully waiving late fees. Adopt whatever mindset you need to write with passion, because if you don’t care about the subject at hand, why should your audience?

Know Your Audience

On that note: Never forget who your target audience is. Imagine you’re a business that makes high-end baby products. Your target audience might be Andy, a thirty-ish accountant who’s about to have his first child. Inhabit Andy’s perspective. This guy is overjoyed, scared, nervous, and impatient all at once for this baby to arrive. He can’t wait — so he’s buying as many baby products as he can to feel like he’s prepared, but baby strollers confuse him (Do they fold up? Can you fit them in a car? Do you really need the accessories they come with?), and he’s willing to pay more for the right one because he doesn’t want to let his wife down.

Talk to Andy. Soothe his worries. Strip out your buzzwords and address him as “you,” as if writer and reader are just having a beer and talking about how baby strollers work. Try out a headline like “Baby Strollers Made Simple.” Then get into some body copy that addresses Andy’s concerns dead-on: “We know what you’re thinking — which baby stroller should I pick? We’ve got some answers.”

Hear that sigh of relief? That’s the sweet sound of a conversion.

Mix It Up

The best web copy is minimal web copy. We’ve said it before: Be succinct. But also be willing to yield space to developers and designers who optimize conversions with their own skill-sets. A page of copy stamped onto whitespace will look HTML-y to users — like they landed on a blog from the dial-up days, or like you put zero seduction into guiding them through your digital marketing strategy. Nest the copy in a color palette that makes your sentences pop. Break it into modules alongside photos that illustrate what you’re describing. Nail that brand headline for a CBB client, but be cool with a programmer animating it so that it emerges out of a cloud of smoke. Think past the copywriting to visualize how your words — thrilling as they are — complement the talents of the other artists working alongside you. And remember to proofread your site with the rigor of a technician. No matter how svelte that CBD brand line is, it’ll look dazed and confused if even one word is misspelled.

Web copy, a memoir, a brochure for a museum — you can make any piece of copy excellent if you trust in it as an art form that moves people. What does that have to do with conversions? Well, it’s not by accident that Google penalizes websites that stuff the text with keywords. Think about that: Even search engines recognize that writing that talks to an audience like humans is more valuable than jargon that assumes consumers are psychographic profiles. Use keywords and meta descriptions, absolutely, but remember this above all else: Write with soul and sincerity, and people will listen to you.

How to Increase Your Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

You know how the best time to get a job is when you have a job? Well, the best time to get new business is when you already have business. You can grow your bottom line in two ways: Acquiring new clients, or retaining the clients you already have and increasing their customer lifetime value (or CLV), which is the amount of revenue that you’ll earn off a consumer in the period that they’re using your service or product. Calculating this metric can get complex, but a simple scenario might run like this:

Imagine that you’re a paper-shredding service that cleans out veritable garbage cans full of old documents for a law firm that pays you $100 a month. You’ve been working with said law firm for a year now. Ergo, this customer’s lifetime value is $1,200. If you continue working with them, their CLV only goes up. Some studies have even found that a 5% uptick in retention can increase profits up to 95%, which is one reason that boosting your CLV is a more effective strategy in turning on the spigot of revenue than always being on the hunt for new business. So here are a few tips on how to extend your portfolio’s CLV.

Perfect the Process of Client and Customer Onboarding

Your employees need to be onboarded to understand the parameters of their roles, where to access the server, how everyone takes the fish-in-the-microwave policy seriously no matter where you go. The same process of providing clarification applies to your clients, as well. Even in the top-of-the-funnel stages, take the opportunity to wow your prospective customers with tutorials, leave-behinds, how-to videos, and walkthrough guides that communicate what you do and why your product is worth their money.

Personalizing all of that collateral to the needs of your user personas can help your sales team ace this vital first-impressions moment and ward off the scourge of customer churn. Plus, open communication helps people on both sides of the contract. Research indicates that 8 out of 10 consumers will pay more for a better customer experience, while businesses that know their customers’ motivations and interests can craft digital marketing messages tailored to them, develop precise upselling and cross-selling tactics, and — what often follows — deliver higher ecommerce conversions and a stronger ROI. Which makes sense: Customers who feel courted from the outset are more likely to seek your services for the long-term.

Stay in Touch with Your Customers

All that presale work you’ve done to charm your clients may not result in a sale unless you stay in touch with them. Keep in mind, though, the follow-up is a fine art: You want to pique people’s interest, but you don’t want to bug them. A careful email marketing strategy may be your solution, since it’s one of the most effective ways to maintain your customers’ attention — so long as those emails are worth the read.

So communicate the benefits of your product or service in a way that doesn’t feel like a one-size-fits-all promotion. Let people know you’re here to help. Send them a birthday hello. You’ve already segmented off your user personas, now be prepared for those personas to change. And when they do, the tone of your messaging should change right along with them — that is, if you want to maintain a relationship with them for the long term.

Switch to an Annual Billing Cycle

One of the foundational questions that any business must ask itself is how to price their services. An equally weighty question is how to bill those services. Those questions overlap, but they’re not exactly the same. Let’s go back to those attorneys who paid you $1,200 for a year of paper-shredding. Whether they fork over the whole amount upfront or $100 on the first of every month hardly matters, right? Wrong. A lump sum of cash allows businesses to forecast revenue, reinvest in operations, and do away with those awkward check-ins meant to chivvy customers across the renewal deadline.

With that said, few of us enjoy handing over a bullfrog of bills to anyone. So incentivize the switch to a yearly payment with a discount — 10–20% off, or a few months of free usage — and talk up the perks of a subscription model (instant access to new product features, multi-tiered offerings tailored to what the customer wants). Annual billing may seem like a lot to ask for, but if you establish a fee structure with a longer lifespan that benefits both merchant and client, you’re almost automatically extending your portfolio’s CLV.

Embrace Upselling and Cross-Selling Tactics

Upselling is the strategy of bumping up the price of a service or a product — a barista asking if you’d like an extra pump of caramel in your latte for $0.30 more, for instance. Cross-selling is offering services or products that complement something that a customer has already bought. Let’s say that you order a hanging planter off Amazon for your newborn’s nursery. Once you’ve filled up your virtual shopping cart, Amazon will cross-sell you with other items related to your purchase. (Wait a minute now, don’t you want a self-watering midcentury bamboo stand to go along with that hanging planter?)

Bundling products, or offering temporary upgrades and free shipping, also help boost revenue. And those tactics can be as beneficial for the company as they are for the customer, since sometimes you need someone to say “Do you need a bike lock?” when you buy a new bike. Just keep your recommendations to a tasteful minimum. Asking customers if they need a new bike lock is one thing. Pressuring them to buy tires and a helmet and a cycling bodysuit may overwhelm them — and cause them to abandon the transaction altogether.

Up Your Prices

Ever hear the old saw about the accountant who audits a business’ books and tells the owner, “I suggest you double your prices”? The owner says, “I can’t do that — I’d lose half my clients.” To which the accountant says: “Then I insist you double your prices.”

We’re not (necessarily) suggesting that you double your prices, but you do need to give yourself a raise as your company matures. Businesses, like professionals, tend to undersell themselves when they start out. As your operations scale up, however — offering new product options, adding more sophisticated clients, shoring up your clients’ bottom lines — you should reexamine how much you’re charging.

Now, a few things: You gotta earn your raise. (Don’t make your services more expensive if those services aren’t adding value for your consumers.) And let’s say you’ve got an old customer who took a chance on you when you had nada in your portfolio. Maybe don’t stun them with a gargantuan fee hike. Instead, build your pricing models to be flexible: Give them a downgraded service plan at their current price with the option of upgrading for a higher fee. Karma doesn’t always factor into business, but when tinkering around with your prices, you should also keep in mind the old saw about burning bridges.

Listen and Learn

The key to nurturing lasting customer relationships may be to view yourself as a partner to your clients rather than a salesperson who’s got to close a deal, because the least glamorous aspect of a digital marketing strategy may be its most vital part: Listening to your audience.

Send out surveys to gauge their responses on how to improve your business. Compile the good feedback with the bad, and sift through it for recurring issues. Granted, this means that you’ll be paddling against streams of criticism for the rest of your career. But what you’ll learn from that criticism will help you solve your customers’ problems, which will likely improve their satisfaction, and which, in turn, tends to do wonders for your profitability in the long-term.

Why Branding Matters

What’s In a Brand?

Companies are the sum of their products and services, but they’re also made up of the tesserae of insights and perspectives of the employees who work for them and the audience who buys from them. Those tesserae, taken together, form the mosaic that is your brand — the reflection of your workplace culture and the totality of your values, a beacon of familiarity for consumers who know you and a handshake extending to consumers who don’t. To put it mildly: Branding matters. Here are just a few reasons why.

Branding Tells Your Story

The word “unique” gets overused a lot in these everyone’s-a-winner days, but each person on the planet really is unique from the other 7.8 billion humans we live among. The same goes for your company. Imagine that you’re a coffee roastery. Even if your dark roast has the same lovely arrangement of smoky-chocolate-marshmallow notes as your competitors’ dark roasts, ask yourself: What is it about your coffee company that’s different from Peet’s or Starbucks or Juan Valdez?

Maybe you had a revelation that you wanted to open your own roastery the moment you took a sip of vintage Colombian coffee in a cobbled plaza in the La Calera hills east of Bogotá. Maybe part of your revenue siphons off into a fund that helps prevent the acidification of coral reefs. Whatever is unique — and true — about your brand will feel likeable to someone who shares your values. That “someone” is your customer base, and one of your first orders of business is to communicate your you-ness to them with a brand design and a number of quick-hitting descriptors that they can absorb in seconds and then somehow work up a hankering for a cup of dark roast.

Branding Establishes Trust

‘Wait a minute,’ you might be thinking. ‘Isn’t branding just a ploy for companies to buddy-buddy up to their consumers, when all those companies really want is to make a buck off us?’ Here’s our answer to that: It can be. But we’d recommend that companies drill into their values and establish trust with their audience rather than regard them as floating dollars to be netted. If a business talks about itself in a way that feels inauthentic, people are going to sniff out its phoniness. So figure out who you are and what you stand for, and hire a brand agency to mold tactics and campaigns that position your brand in a way that people will relate to it.

Let’s say you’re that roastery again. First things first: You’ll get people to trust you if you brew a high-quality cup of coffee every time. But you have to deliver on other articles of faith, as well. If you support Fair Trade to raise the standard of living for coffee farmers in equatorial latitudes, don’t limit your own employees to 29 hours and pay them starvation wages. Live up to your principles in every aspect of your operations and your audience will trust you. Which means you’ve got a shot at establishing brand loyalty with them, so that they’re buying into you as much as they’re buying from you.

Branding Keeps Things Bold

A funny thing often happens on the way to the formation of a brand identity: Companies know they need to say something that’ll help them stand out, so in the final hours before launch, they decide it’s best to say something that’ll help them blend in. Why? Because real is risky.

Don’t get us wrong, there are plenty of cautionary tales out there about how taking risks in the ad world can flop. (Burger King’s “Women belong in the kitchen” tweet, which was phrased ironically to attract attention to their support for a scholarship that helps aspiring female chefs — but which people didn’t find all that appetizing — is only a recent example of cringeworthy chutzpah.) By “risky,” though, we mean embarking on a campaign that’s perhaps even edgier than coming up with a head-swiveling statement: Being yourself.

If you did have a cup of coffee in Bogotá that was so rich and deep that it transported you into visions of opening up your own cafe, tell that story. The last thing you want to do when talking about yourself is to adopt the tone of a corporate comms manual, because no one wants to read that stuff, anyway. Be sensitive to others, yes, but be you. Authenticity and honesty will probably always seem bold, and so long as you mix those two fine traits in with empathy, your branding will feel more genuine and enduring than anyone else’s blanding.

Branding Brings Value

Price is perspective. If you’ve ever given your work away for free, you may have noticed — with horror — that your clients tend to undervalue the thing they’re not paying for. We often trick ourselves into assuming that something’s worth more if it’s more expensive, and the same psychological acrobatics are at play with branding.

The world’s most influential brands are pricetagged in the billions, and even a logo can cost hundreds of millions of dollars anymore. All of that valuation imparts legitimacy, legitimacy imparts familiarity, and familiarity is the quintessence of a successful brand, since consumers generally feel more at ease parking their money with people or products they know and trust.

Think about it: If a guy on the street handed you a latte, you might pour it out on the curb. (You don’t know this dude, and the fact that he’s giving away this thing gratis seems suspect.) Whereas if you pass by a Starbucks, the store’s aura of legitimacy assures you that paying five or six dollars for a latte is worth it, because that latte’s been approved through a certain global vetting process. The quality of the latte is important, for sure, but the guy on the street’s latte may be even tastier. What’s the difference? The legitimacy of the branding, which often commands a higher price-point on the market than the quality of the product alone.

Branding Focuses the Company Culture

Books need outlines, buildings need blueprints, and businesses need brands, because they don’t just drum up familiarity in customers — they also help center the employees who uphold those brands. If done right, your brand story and positioning statement should be the end-product of a lot of time spent thinking about your workplace’s vision and why it matters. What does any of this have to do with your employees? Well, if your brand standards faithfully represent your culture, you’re more likely to attract talented folks who thrive in that culture.

Branding that unites people with a purpose boosts morale, which may lead to employee advocacy, the power of which cannot be overstated. Companies that build excellent reputations often enjoy the perks of positive word-of-mouth. (When someone endorses you — which amounts to a free promotion — someone else is more likely to buy from you.) Glowing reviews, from customers and workers alike, can drive business referrals and increase your revenue. And it all starts with committing to a brand that everyone can rally behind.

Branding Provides Clarity

For people running a business, it’s tempting to sprint forward every day — taking meetings, putting out fires, patching cracks in the bottom line. But whenever you can, slow down and reassess your company’s identity. Branding may seem ephemeral, a feel-goody exercise that’ll end up on some poster about values in the lobby. Yet this process of introspection can help you foresee trends, map your growth patterns, pinpoint solutions to recurring problems, and better communicate your expertise to your clients. Stenciling forth the uniqueness of your brand may serve to guide you forward amid the gales of business cycles and market forces for years to come.

Five Tips on How to Launch Your eCommerce Brand

One of the most impactful lessons we learned from 2020 was that so many of our everyday activities can now be done online, from shopping to going to college to sitting in on meetings, more easily than a lot of us even realized (and in pajama bottoms, no less).

Take online shopping (or ecommerce — the electronic buying and selling of goods): In 2019, online shoppers spent $598 billion with US merchants. The following year, with all of us stuck at home, that number zoomed up to $861 billion. Analysts estimate that the number of digital buyers worldwide will reach 2.1 billion by 2021, up from 1.66 billion in 2016.

As you can probably imagine, corporate behemoths dominate this space. (According to some estimates, Amazon accounts for 44% of all ecommerce sales.) To survive in today’s market, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs need to siphon off some of the proceeds their larger competitors are raking in, shaping their digital marketing strategy to offer online shopping and mobile payment options to customers. So if you’re not already in this game, here are five tips on how to launch your own ecommerce brand.

Figure Out Who You’re Selling To

“Who is my target audience online?” That’s the first question you need to ask in creating an ecommerce presence. Theoretically, your product options are endless. You could be trafficking in candles, rain barrels, hazmat suits, second-hand Aston Martins, bulk lumber — and you might have a supply of these items already stored away in your family warehouse. But your business nonetheless starts with figuring out who wants all that stuff. So identify your user personas and hone in on what they’re looking for within your service or product category.

Once you’ve sketched out the demographics of your audience and the demand for what you’re selling, decide on a revenue model that you can control. Do you have local or global reach? Are you selling a service or a product? Are you piggybacking off other platforms’ services and products? Answering these questions should nudge you into running a hard-nosed calculus of how much all this will cost. Project your revenue against your expenses so that you can clarify your profit margins and anticipate your breakeven point with some accuracy. Because the last thing you want when starting a business is to be served with a tab of pricey surprises.

Write a Business Plan

You’ve figured out who you’re selling to. You may have even sourced a supplier. Now you need to engage in competitive analysis. A word to the wise: You do want some competition. A market space with no competition can indicate there’s no market. At the same time, be wary of jamming your way into a crowded sector, or buying a slew of products in an attempt to topple the Amazons of the world. Especially if you’re starting out, you probably don’t want to position yourself as everything to everybody.

Instead, focus on a niche that you’re passionate about and that performs well on social media. Let’s say you want to sell plants online. Research other plant nurseries. Look at their prices. Audit their websites. Take note of their shipping timelines. Get a sense of how their marketing strategy works. All of those insights will help you address one of the capstone questions every business must answer: What do you offer that separates you from your competitors?

Exert pressure on your answer until you make it as granular as possible. Then write up a business plan that consolidates your ideas and clarifies how you’ll reach new customers. And while you’re at it, make allies among your competition. Working with other business owners in your space to cross-promote products, or becoming an affiliate of a larger company, can help bring in much-needed dollars as you grow.

Choose a Name

Next, choose a name for your business, one that’s preferably pithy, leaps melodiously off the tongue, and that no one has already claimed as a domain name. A year ago, there were (oh, give or take) 366.8 million domain names registered online, so be sure your business name transfers to a domain name that no one else has called dibs on. If you’re “Plants-a-Million,” you do not want to settle for a URL of Plantz-a-Million, because a disconnect of even a single character may send your prospective customers spiraling into tizzies of frustration.

With that said, if Plants-a-Million.com is taken, you can always use plenty of other extensions — .net, .biz, .me, .co — because people rarely type in full web addresses anymore. They click on an ad or a link, or they dive through a warren of Google’s rabbit-holes, and somehow emerge having ordered half a million bromeliads off your ecommerce site.

Brand Your Brand

After you claim a domain name, hire a brand agency to build a website for you, create a logo and a consistent design, and develop a digital marketing strategy that will drive traffic to your site. Don’t settle for anything less than blogs integrated with keyphrases, metadata built into the backend of the CMS, omnichannel research that identifies where your customers shop and marketing funnels that lure them away from the competition and into your online store. (And give us a shout if you want it done right.)

Prepare for Launch

By this juncture, you’re prepared for perhaps the most vital step of all: Opening up your online store. Especially for entrepreneurs launching their first ecommerce brand, we recommend selling through bona fide ecommerce platforms like Woocommerce, Magento, or Shopify — one-stop-shop interfaces that come with software such as a storefront, a payment processor, a shipping partner, a back office, and a marketing HQ. Those platforms are just three of hundreds of options out there, so research the distinguishing features of a number of them to make sure the platform you’re signing up for is compatible with your business needs.

Throwing open the doors to your online storefront can be exciting — and it’s most likely going to continue to become the preferred bazaar of the future. Budget at least 18–24 months to launch an ecommerce brand and get it into the black, because the adage about spending money to make money applies here. If you come up with a plan and execute it with patience, though, you’re well on your way to branding your baby and converting browsers into buyers.

Let the ecommerce commence.

Multi-Channel Advertising and the Consumer Funnel

Enter the Funnel

The world population currently stands at 7.8 billion people — and nearly 630,000 publicly traded companies are vying for their attention every day. So how can your business create messages that cut through the din and turn potential leads into loyal customers? You lure them into the consumer funnel.

Ask a group of advertisers, and they’ll each sketch a different version of the funnel, since it isn’t a sanctioned diagram so much as a representation of the sales cycle that can change according to the marketing strategy applied to any given account. But the classic B2C funnel resembles an inverted pyramid that proceeds top-to-bottom in this order: “Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action.” To really understand the funnel, let’s take a test-run of it ourselves, tumbling from its broadest echelon down to its narrowest point, and touching on the best tactics associated with each stage as we go.

Awareness

When people embark on what’s known as the “customer journey,” they’re often just searching for information about a business or a product. For that reason, the topmost level of the funnel is usually referred to as the “awareness stage.” Consider this the cast-the-net-wide step, in which marketers will advise you to dedicate time to consumer research so you know who your audience is, where to find them, how to appeal to them, and which top-of-the-funnel tactics — such as blogs, webinars, infographics, SEO content, or social media posts, to name a few — you want to push out for the sake of lead generation (that is, stoking interest in people, or gauging how interested they are in continuing on this customer journey with you).

Let’s say your target audience is people who want to sink some money into their house. When they’re at the top of the funnel, they’re probably just Googling, “How much does a home reno cost?” rather than scoping out pictures of herringbone backsplash tile on Pinterest. The ad that a savvy digital marketer should serve them at this juncture needs to communicate that, hi, we’re a construction company, and we can give you an honest quote whenever you need it. ‘How convenient,’ your future clients think, as they click further down the funnel …

Interest

So now you’ve waved your arms around enough that people are taking notice of you. Leads have been generated. Attention has been captured. Next you’ll need to teach the consumers who you lured in your direction about your company or the services you offer. The “interest” phase is where all the leads that you’ve attracted suss out into only the most “qualified leads,” which you should view as prospective customers. That net you cast in the last step has turned into a lasso, and you’re switching from social posts and webinars to blogs and email campaigns tailored to your qualified leads’ interests.

Desire

Even further down the slide we go into the “desire” phase. Before now, you and your qualified leads have been orbiting each other. But the time for coyness has passed and the terms are clear: You want them, they’re considering buying from you, but they’re still reading reviews and comparing products. Nudge them onward with case studies and customer testimonials, and if you’re an online retailer, build in functionality that lets them drop what they want in a virtual shopping cart — anything that’ll push the customer out of their will-I-won’t-I hesitations and into making a purchase.

Action

If all goes well, we will arrive at the terminus of this customer journey once someone makes a purchase, be it a crib from West Elm or the agreement to hire you to do a home renovation. The immediate goal is a sale, true, but the larger objective of a digital marketing strategy is to fatten up that inverted pyramid so that it better resembles a cylinder or an hourglass: Again, the top echelon is the widest, and it tapers to the “action” (sometimes called the “conversion”) phase. Ideally, however, it enlarges once more after that, swelling into a base of retained customers who buy from you again and again, and who advocate for your brand with glowing reviews left on your site. The tactics at this stage? Try referral programs or re-engagement email campaigns to personalize the relationship and encourage repeat purchases.

The (Omni)Channels

The funnel can be flipped upside-down, turned into a figure-eight, swapped around depending on whether it depicts a B2B or B2C play, and so on. Yet despite all the rungs you can layer into it, the premise remains pretty intuitive: Snag your audience’s attention, whet their curiosity, and convert them into a loyal purveyor of your shop. What distinguishes an old-school marketing strategy from a digital marketing strategy, however, is that today the funnel is piped through with a web of channels — so many that the current lingo for our field is “omnichannel” or “multi-channel” advertising.

Those channels might be TV, radio, computers, cell phones, or some combination of all of the above. People are paying attention to different channels at different times throughout the day, so catching their attention becomes more complex if they’re on multiple devices at once. Which means digital marketers need to place their ads on an array of channels to grab consumers’ attention in a way that still encourages the use of multiple devices.

Here’s an example: Imagine that you’re a “Real Housewives of New York City” fanatic. (Or, at least, someone you live with has it on literally all the time.) TV producers realize that when you’re watching that show, you’re probably also scrolling on your phone or your tablet, so they float out overlays of hashtags (#rhony, anyone?) during an episode to get you to post about it. Then, at the end of a season, when Andy Cohen hosts a “reunion” among the housewives, he reads out a lot of those posts. Sure, he’s stoking tempers and digging into old wounds (and making bingeable TV in the process). But he’s also reinforcing the feedback loop between social and TV channels — asking reality stars how they react to criticism from their audience about their outrageous behavior, even though their audience tuned in just to see that outrageous behavior in the first place.

And that is merely one dimension of Bravo’s media plan: Encourage viewers to comment on the show, poke more antics out of the housewives with those comments, and keep driving the meta-cycle that blurs the line between audience and actor.

Building Customer Value

All the channels connect. Run a hashtag campaign on Bravo, and someone might post about it on Twitter. Advertise on YouTube, and someone might search for your product on Google. Once you transpose the channels — which are like on-ramps weaving through the funnel — the picture of an inverted pyramid piped with a cluster of extensions can appear dizzyingly 3D. Tempting as it is to assume that this framework will always entice your customers, this is not necessarily a if-you-build-it-they-will-come situation. Customers click around faster than any marketing team can concoct a media plan, which means your analytics need to track them and your strategy needs to adapt to their interests, not the other way around.

So link up all your channels, but before you hose your audience with content, pinpoint the essential service that you’re giving them: An online selection of tropical plants? A newsletter of haiku and short stories? A minute-by-minute update of stocks that they should invest in? Never forget, their loyalty depends on the value you provide them, which means you need to identify your user personas and hone in on the overlap between what you’re selling and what they’re looking for. Whenever possible, make the consumer journey enjoyable rather than results-obsessed, and you may find that customers are more likely to re-enter the funnel at their next opportunity.

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.

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.

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’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