- Emily Malone
Sketch notes from Inbound 2017
To bring to life the notepads I took around with me during Inbound 2017, I created several ‘sketch notes’ of the sessions I attended. Call it doodling or simply just expressing thoughts and ideas — I aimed for something quite visual that I might want to look at again, and who knows, even blog about…
Kill the PDF
Jeff White – Thursday 28th September 2017
Is it time to Kill the PDF? The PDF, essentially, wasn’t made for web documents, and after this talk I thought: ‘that makes absolute perfect sense’. Reporting back to oe:gen HQ, I’ve now advised our marketing team to convert all our whitepapers, quick start guides, useful plannng templates and more into web pages.
PDF files are not meant for viewing on mobiles
Don’t deliver your most premium content in a format that cannot be easily consumed on mobile
PDF’s can’t be edited easily
Once a pdf has been created – it can’t easily be modified requiring re-export
Once downloaded, it can’t be updated
Compare this with a web page which can be readily updated with your CMS
PDF forms can’t easily to be tied to a CRM
PDF documents are simply ‘not of the web’
PDF’s struggle with rich media
Possible to embed video but not a good idea
PDF’s can’t contain analytics
They are essentially offline
No caching or controlled downloading
No progressive downloading
Downloaded as single bundle
Lower search rank than native HTML
A web page gets indexed – PDF’s don’t
10 things we’ve learned from doing over 100 website throwdowns
Carina Duffy – Tuesday 26th September 2017
Website throwdown is where a group of experts in marketing, design, and UX get together to do a monthly review of submitted websites people send in to be critiqued. In her talk Carina Duffy defined some of the difficulties designers come across in creating marketing web sites and shared some fundamental insights every designer or marketer should be conscious of.
Copy
Your website isn’t about you
Offer your Personas a way to fix their fears
Talk to your people
Be a good listener
Listen to customers, data, criticism
SEO isn’t dead
Compare this with a web page which can be readily updated with your CMS
Form fields
Match the value of the offer
Just test it
Talked about a lot, but do we really do it?
Think about mobile
Small things like ‘mobile responsiveness issue’ become huge trust eroders for users
Don’t use stock photos
Find a way to take your own pictures
You can’t stop avoiding video
Think about Facebook live and Instagram Live etc
Don’t take the user journey for granted
Find someone who has never been to your website and watch them use it
View and create your website from the perspective of the user
Keynote
Michelle Obama – Thursday 28th September 2017
Former First Lady, Michelle Obama, inspired the audience with words of wisdom in her keynote speech. She spoke about ways to improve diversity in tech companies, and also touched upon Hillary Clinton’s loss in the election. Of equal importance, she revealed that her favorite song on Beyoncé’s Lemonade album was ‘Love Drought’.
Be a feminist
Have strength of will
How could they look at her opponent (Hillary Clinton) and think his voice represents me?
You can try to lead with fear but it doesn’t work – it isn’t healthy
Never try to be anyone else
Always be yourself
Would I ever want to be anyone else?
Vision and Strategy
Define your process (or lack of it)
Let your work speak for itself
Live your most truthful self
Don’t let other people define you
Be who you are.