Future Ready: A Dynamic Digital Media Seminar. Summer Session: July 21 - 23

Turn Online Possibilities into
Online Profitability

Your site might be rich in content and beautifully designed – but are you maximizing the user experience and revenue potential? Or perhaps your site is a workhorse, but are you ready to take it to the next level?

Cia Romano of Interface Guru and Lou Ann Sabatier of Sabatier Consulting have partnered to offer training designed for mid to senior-level publishing professionals. This three day hands-on seminar will provide the roadmap you need to meet the unique challenges and wealth of opportunities in digital publishing.

OPTIMIZE YOUR WEBSITE
You will gain information and insight you can use immediately from the interactive class sessions, team exercises and personal critique of your site.

The Curriculum

Day One: (Sessions run from 9 am to 4 pm)

Session One (30 Minutes)

TRENDS & METRICS IN DIGITAL PUBLISHING
  • Online business trends
  • User behavior

Session Two (2 Hours)

SITE & CONTENT STRATEGY: BUSINESS DECISIONS
  • Why have a strategy/goals?
    • Performance and profitability is driven by strategy and goals
  • Set goals
  • Take inventory:
    • What’s working and what’s not working
    • What do you want to do that you currently cannot do?
  • Document requirements
  • Incorporate all into your strategy

Session Three (2 Hours)

TOOLS/ WEB 2.0: COMMUNITIES, RICH MEDIA, AND MOBILE
  • Using tools in context
  • Marketing tools, industry standards and best practices
  • How to assess your users’ receptiveness to Web 2.0 features
  • How to make the most of rich media and when to avoid over-designing features
  • What makes communities work – and what makes them fail
  • How to ensure mobile users are having a useful brand experience

Session Four (1 ½ Hours)

MONETIZE
  • Philosophy about generating income for the site
  • Direct
    • Advertising, sponsorship, data, search, premium content, E-commerce
  • Indirect
    • Source migration

DAY TWO: Full Day (Sessions run from 9 am to 4 pm)

USABILITY: THE WEB SITE LOOKS GOOD, BUT DOES IT WORK?

Web sites are not magazine covers - because users are interacting with them. This session teaches -- and demonstrates -- the fundamentals of usable Web sites, based on hundreds of hours of direct user research. You'll conduct your own analysis of a major Web site, then apply what you've learned to your own Web site. Learn:

  • How users respond to Web sites, and why
  • The fundamentals of usability and excellent user experience
  • How and when to measure usability and user experience
  • Industry-standard steps in building great Web sites
  • How to quickly evaluate Web page usability

DAY THREE: (Sessions run from 9 am to 4 pm)

Session One (2 Hours)

ADVERTISING ONLINE: REACHING USERS WITHOUT ALIENATING THEM

On the Web, users are in the driver’s seat – and they can easily leave your Web site and go elsewhere if intrusive ads annoy them. On the Web, ads can quickly go from eye-catching to irritating. How do you present online ads that work for your advertiser without irritating users? This session teaches proven research-based methods for optimum ad placement. You will learn:

  • Why and how to label and place ads
  • How to turn ads into valued “content”
  • Why users value house ads over third-party ads
  • Simple but effective ways to keep both advertisers and users happy

Session Two (2 Hours)

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION AND WRITING FOR THE WEB

It won't matter if your article is good enough to win awards if no one can find it to read it. On the other hand, no one wants an article that's written to serve search engines but not readers. You'll learn how writing for the Web is different than writing for print, and how to do it without alienating your audience. Learn:

  • How to write great leads (search ad copy?) that grab the attention of readers and search engines
  • What makes an article float to the top of search results
  • How today's readers find information online -- and why
  • Who the real competition is for your readers' attention, and the competitive advantage is yours.

Session Three (2 Hours)

METRICS: REAL MEASUREMENTS OF SUCCESS

Get a crash course in Web metrics. Not sure what to measure, or just what those stats mean? Unlike print, the Web can provide a wealth of business intelligence about users’ online behavior. Are you leveraging that data, or letting it fall by the wayside? Web metrics are well worth the investment of tracking them. In this session you’ll learn:

  • Which pages and behaviors (user tasks) you should be tracking
  • Why visit duration means different things for different publishers
  • Strategies for mining the wealth of data your Web site is collecting 24x7
  • What do you do with the data that you collect?