I recently found this good article on “Measuring Engagement”.

The article discusses engagement goals (what you want people to do) and what key performance indicators (KPIs) are good to measure.

Every client/company may have unique goals but I thought the final list was a good example.

1. Register for Alerts by RSS feed – to get new content
2. Views (videos, rich images, design concepts)
3. Use the design widget
4. Put the widget on their blog or Facebook, etc
5. Feedback (via the site)
6. Email subscriptions
7. Favorites (add an item to favourites)
8. Feedback (via the site)
9. Forward to a friend
10. Invite / Refer (a friend)
11. Social media sharing / participation (activity on key social media sites, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Digg, relevant design forums, blogs etc)
12. Time spent on key pages
13. Time spent on site (by source / by entry page)

By tracking and measuring your user’s actions you then can start to focus on the user’s needs, likes and dislikes. In the end you give your audience the right tools and content they are looking for.

Branding can be a confusing topic. A simple definition is building a “look” using fonts, color schemes, graphic devices, imagery, and a logo that all combine to represent a corporate “personality”. That personality should ultimately reflect the kind of business that you do and the values that you hope to project to the consumer.

I often get questions like, “Why does my logo have to be in the same place on everything?” or “Can we change the logo color to yellow, just in the Powerpoint templates?”.

There is no quick answer for either of these questions but if you keep in mind that you are projecting a “personality” and that everything created should advance that objective and be in a consistent “language” then these questions become a little easier to answer.

Let’s take the first question, Why does my logo have to be in the same place on everything?
Putting the logo in the same place on everything sends the subconscious message that you and your company are consistent and well organized. You also get the benefit of recognition and expectation when you send your client something new. Over time, a quick glance is all that is needed to alert your audience that this piece of business collateral is from you. Which may make the difference between being read or being tossed in the garbage. That being said, for every rule, there is an exception. When consistency is the norm, a break from that can shock the consumer into taking a second look. The trick is to make the rules work for you by being aware of them and always using them to your advantage.

“Can we change the logo color to yellow, just in the Powerpoint templates?”
Of course you can, but do you want to? Go back to the “personality” filter. What does it say about your company that you arbitrarily change the color of your logo to suit your short term needs? You did not plan ahead for all of your logos uses when you were designing it, you are not that organized, your attention to detail is not your strong suit, your into quick and easy fixes… you get the picture.

Designers are not here to make your life harder and more complicated, we want to make things easier and help you project the right “Corporate Personality” for your business. We do that by creating a set of guidelines that safeguard your “look” and “personality” and actually make future marketing easier by choosing the “language” that we use to describe your company and sticking with it.

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination, imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited, imagination encircles the world.” -Albert Einstein

First Lady Michelle Obama presented the 2009 National Design Awards. The video discusses going out into the community to let kids know they belong on the cutting edge of design and they belong in the world of discovery and science.

This is a great video. If you have time you should check this out.