Simpleet

Paula asked us a simple question, “your name is Windows. Why are you a flag?”

The line above is an example of mutual respect borne between design agency and client. Brilliant!

IIS Server through the eyes of an SEO

Disclaimer: This post is long and technical, but has been lovingly paraphrased for the benefit of non-technical SEOs to get involved and step out of their comfort zone. Recently, I’ve had to deal with sites running on IIS and rather than just prescribing universal SEO fixes, I decided to get my hands really, really dirty. This is what I’ve learned…

In this post: (Use the navigation links, trust me!)

1. Brief explanation of what IIS is
2. Why SEOs should care about IIS
3. How to get a free, super powerful crawler – You need Windows 7
4. IIS "out of the box SEO faults" you need to know about
5. The Chaining 301 disease and a way to fix it
6. Interview / SEO Resource guide for IIS 7+ - with Mark Ridley
7. Possible sexual attraction to Microsoft products

Internet Information Services (IIS) is the second most popular web server in the world to Apache. IIS’s first big gig was in 1995 and still continues to power a massive portion of the internet today. Read more about Microsoft's history on the web

• You’ll likely have a client sooner or later that uses IIS
• There are some common SEO faults with IIS that you need to know
• Fixing those default "faults" can significantly improve the site's SEO
• You need to understand how this beast works before you say “301” or “clean URL”
• I will show you how to get a free kickass crawler – You need Windows 7 on your machine
• If you can speak IIS, those super smart developers will instantly warm up to you
• IIS popularity is growing (see image below)

IIS isn’t going anywhere, in fact it’s growing. Whether you appreciate Microsoft products or not, there are many that do and there’s no doubt that you’ll likely have to consult a client running IIS.

Requirements: Windows 7 (automatically comes with IIS 7.5)Sorry Mac! – muhahaha
How: IIS server & SEO toolkit on your Windows 7 machine
Why: It’s frickin incredible – It will make your SEO life much much easier.
Difficulty: Easy
Estimated Completion time: 5-7 minutes

 

Why it's so cool!

Watch this video, and tell me you DON'T need this beast :)

• Reports on content, SEO and other violations. Tells you how to fix it in plain english
• You can add your own custom violations
• Fully functional database of what's going on with your site
• Tons and tons of custom reporting, including mapping navigation paths
• Find orphaned pages from Sitemap
• And much much more. You expected that right :)

 

We can get you up and running in 10 minutes (minimum requirements): follow these instructions– this is EASY.

First, install IIS Server

1. Start > Settings > Control Panel
2. Programs & Features
3. Click on "Turn Windows Features on/off"
4. Find the Internet Information Services folder, expand it
5. Expand the Web Management tools folder
6. Make sure IIS Management Console is checked, click OK

Next, the IIS toolkit - Post here with screenshots

1. Download the IIS Web Platform Installer, and install it
2. Click on Start, search for "Web platform installer", open it up
3. Once in the web platform, type in "SEO" in the search bar - top right
4. It should be the last item in the list "Search Engine Optimisation Toolkit", click add, then install
5. Click on start, type in: inetmgr
6. Look for the Icon that says "Search Engine Optimisation Toolkit", and double click
7. You're done! You now have an insane, free crawler on your machine :)

Now you need to:

1. Crawl a site!
2. Understand the analysis!
3. Enjoy, you'll love it :)

Read Microsoft's official instructions for the IIS SEO toolkit

• Default Documents:

Read more about this here. Example of a default document: www.example.com/index.html www.example.com - will return the same content, different URLs

Case insensitive

IIS by default will serve the same content regardless of casing Example: www.example.com/BLOG and www.example.com/blog are the same content, different URLs

Works with www and non www (site canonicalization)

By default, like most servers you'll get the same content from www.example.com and example.com

Why it’s a problem: You get a hard earned inbound link to the wrong URL and it doesn’t give you full credit – “but it’s the same page!” No, it’s not, and no, Google doesn’t magically fix this even though they try.

But hey! No one is going to link to your site like this! Right? cc Matt Cutts 2006

• www.example.com/
• example.com/
• www.example.com/index.html
• example.com/INDEX.html

Yes, yes they do. Not on purpose, but they do.

This is a very real problem for older, larger sites that hadn’t canonicalized their domain, or bothered with consistent URL structure in the past. Fast forward to 2011 and we SEOs start nitpicking for every bit of link juice and we notice that we’re missing out on all of these external links because we’re not redirecting these inbound links to the right pages. We need to write some permanent redirect rules to catch these.

Simple, right? When someone links to our real page www.example.com/blog/ like this: example.com/Blog

We just do a 301 redirect back to www.example.com/blog/ ! Happy days right? Please continue…

It’s best to explain this by example. Open up this page from Cheapflights.co.uk.

Notice the capital L (london)? What happens when we request http://www.cheapflights.co.uk/flights/london/?

 

Brilliant! Even if someone incorrectly links to the lowercase version, we get a 301 redirect to the correct page http://www.cheapflights.co.uk/flights/London/

Here’s where I get crazy. Let’s say I decide to link to http://cheapflights.co.uk/flights/london

I want you to notice a couple of things here:

1. No www
2. London is london
3. Monitor the http requests, try HTTPFOX for FireFox

 

Whoa! Two 301 redirects! We know one 301 loses link juice, but 2?The point here is that Google is far less likely to pass on PageRank with each chained redirect, you should always aim for no more than one 301 redirect.

This is referred to as chaining 301 redirects (My example is specific to IIS)

Why is this happening?

When you are creating redirect rules, the server usually obeys each condition depending on what it finds. As a good SEO, you should always canonicalise the domain – as a smart SEO you’ll probably want to stop any uppercasing goofs too, maybe even trailing slashes while you’re at it!

 

My obsession – I noticed this all over the web and I was obsessed with finding the “catch all” redirect rule that would only redirect once, to the right URL.

I failed, until I got some very clever friends involved. Meet Daniel Furze, developer at Reed.co.uk.

A way to fix the chain for common SEO issues

I'm nicknaming this the "Furze Method" :) This method has been tried and tested, so we know it works. You should add this rule base in web.config for a .net app. Learn more here.

We're using IIS 7 and the url rewrite 2.0 module here which allows us to run regex rules against different parts of the url and then either Redirect or Rewrite them. The ability to rewrite is what I'm using to make sure we keep 301 chaining to a minimum. It allows us to run several rules against the url, cleaning it up in stages before doing one final Redirect. The trick to this is that when a rewrite rule matches and it does it's job it adds a _ to the path of the url. The final rules look for any path beginning with _ and will then strip this out and redirect. Let's have a look at the rules and then break them down in to sections.

Section 1

<rule name="WhiteList - resources" stopProcessing="true">

<match url="^resources/" />

<conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false" />

<action type="None" />

</rule>

The first rule is very important here as there is no need to be cleaning up resource requests (remember all requests pass through here including image, css and js files with an integrated pipe).

Section 2

<rule name="SEO - remove default.aspx" stopProcessing="false">

<match url="(.*?)/?default\.aspx$" />

<conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">

<add input="{HTTP_METHOD}" pattern="GET" />

</conditions>

<action type="Rewrite" url="_{R:1}" />

</rule>

<rule name="SEO - Remove trailing slash" stopProcessing="false">

<match url="(.+)/$" />

<conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">

<add input="{HTTP_METHOD}" pattern="GET" />

<add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" />

<add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" />

</conditions>

<action type="Rewrite" url="_{R:1}" />

</rule>

<rule name="SEO - ToLower" stopProcessing="false">

<match url="(.*)" ignoreCase="false" />

<conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">

<add input="{HTTP_METHOD}" pattern="GET" />

<add input="{R:1}" pattern="[A-Z]" ignoreCase="false" />

</conditions>

<action type="Rewrite" url="_{ToLower:{R:1}}" />

</rule>

The 2nd section of 3 rules will tidy up different parts of the url

1. remove default.aspx, since we are using .net we want to clean up any stray default.aspx from the path (less important with a greenfield mvc app), you can change this rule for any other document types that you like including index.html.
2. clean up trailing slashes from the path of the url ie www.yoursite.com/news/ becomes www.yoursite.com/news
3. lowercase the whole path part of the url, the querystring isn't touched as these are often case sensitive so www.yoursite.com/News becomes www.yoursite.com/news

Section 3

<rule name="SEO - http canonical redirect" stopProcessing="true">

<match url="^(_*)(.*)" />

<conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">

<add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^www\.yoursite\.org$" negate="true" />

<add input="{HTTP_METHOD}" pattern="GET" />

<add input="{SERVER_PORT}" pattern="80" />

</conditions>

<action type="Redirect" url="http://www.yoursite.org/{R:2}" />

</rule>

<rule name="SEO - https canonical redirect" stopProcessing="true">

<match url="^(_*)(.*)" />

<conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">

<add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^www\.yoursite\.org$" negate="true" />

<add input="{HTTP_METHOD}" pattern="GET" />

<add input="{SERVER_PORT}" pattern="443" />

</conditions>

<action type="Redirect" url="https://www.yoursite.org/{R:2}" />

</rule>

<rule name="SEO - non-canonical redirect" stopProcessing="true">

<match url="^(_+)(.*)" />

<conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">

<add input="{HTTP_METHOD}" pattern="GET" />

</conditions>

<action type="Redirect" url="{R:2}" />

</rule>

The 3rd part is a little more tricky, this is the part that does the actual Redirect but it is also responsible for one last tidy-up as well. The first 2 rules will fix missing www and then redirect while also respecting the port the requested url was using ie http://yoursite.com becomes http://www.yoursite.com and the same for https. The reason these 2 rules are separate is that I haven't figured out how to add www without also specifying either http or https. The 3rd rule will do a redirect if any of the SEO Rewrite rules caught but the url already had www in it. You can see that these last 3 rules pay attention to _ which might be in the path from the previous rewrite rules.

One final gotcha is to make sure you don't actually have any geniune urls that begin with _ , if you do then you can substitute this for another special character but you will have to make sure it all still works. And also to pay attention to which ones have stopProcessing="true" on them, typically a Redirect will stop and a SEO rewrite will carry on. If you are wanting to put in any other rules for say redirecting email links or migrating old pages to new pages then I would recommend putting them in between any Whitelist rules you have and the SEO rules at the bottom.

The final result is a very mangled url like:

http://yoursite/NeWs/default.aspx?id=123 will redirect to http://www.yoursite/news?id=123 with only one 301.

You can see how it works live here..please disregard the domain name!http://a4uexpobavarianbeerandsausageonstand50.org/ArTIcle/

You'll notice that our non www, uppercase and trailing slash version 301's to http://www.a4uexpobavarianbeerandsausageonstand50.org/article with one 301! Cool!

Mark Ridley is the Head of Development & an IIS expert at Reed and a personal friend of mine that I called for help. Oh feel free to bug him on Twitter, just say I told you to :)

I need to 301 redirect page A to page B, how can we do this?

Dave: This is fairly easy, we won't reinvent the wheel - please see detail instructions here. Updated: Another great resource (full tutorial) has been discovered thanks to Alan in the comments

We are migrating a site and we know which pages to redirect to, can you send us the rewrite map template so we can fill it out? (Basically explain that the Devs could send a rewrite map template and then just apply rules)

Dave: Yes, it is possible. Get a developer to send you a template, use this resource here.

How will ASP, .net, PHP react to our redirect rules? Are there any common pitfalls?

IIS URL Rewrite rules will execute before any rewrites or redirects that your application insists upon. There are some very technical reasons for this. Essentially, the web server thinks it's more important than your code, which is probably correct. The only pitfalls to watch out for, exactly as with Apache, is that you're making sensible rules on the web server. It is a little bit too easy to make infinite redirect loops, or at least very long chains of redirects that won't make you popular with search engines

Is there anything Apache can do that IIS can't?

There's WAY better community support for Apache, and a much wider adoption. That doesn't mean that IIS has poor support, just that the number of articles telling you about Apache is going to outnumber IIS by orders of magnitude, partially why this article is important. Other than that - yes, some Apache modules make Apache do things that IIS can't, but there aren't many things that will trouble the 80% of 'normal' users.

Do you prefer IIS or Apache? Why?

I refuse to get involved in a religious argument! Both are very capable web servers (number 1 and 2 in the market according to Netcraft), and often the decision to use one or the other is not based on the capability of the web server itself. Microsoft houses will use IIS and Free/Open Source or *nix houses will use Apache (or nginx). It doesn't hurt anyone to understand both, especially as your client will have made the decision to use one or the other, and probably won't want to change. It's enough to know that both are sensible choices depending on your reasons.

How can I speed up page load time with IIS?

IIS, like Apache's mod_gzip, allows you to turn on gzip compression of both static and dynamic content. It's a very simple change that will make a massive difference to your page download speed, and your bandwidth costs! This was added in IIS7 and was a long overdue feature. All modern browsers support content compression, and there is almost no downside to enabling it.

A more technical, and complex solution is also available in addition to content compression, which is output caching (http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/710/configure-iis-7-output-caching/). This is probably something best left to the developers and server administrators to argue over, as whilst it can have benefits they are less obvious and harder to achieve than compression.

Can you easily give me log files? What information can I get? What software do you recommend to parse the logs?

Of course! IIS logs just the same way Apache does - writing log files into a folder. You can use exactly the same format as Apache, or several other popular web log formats, which are simple configuration options in IIS. Log parsing is often now less common with the massive improvements in online services, such as Google Analytics, Webtrends or Omniture. With Google Analytics being free, you're in a position to do away with pesky logs and let your marketeers do the analysis without worrying about the underlying technology. The free 'Live' view which is currently in Beta in GA is also amazing, and will sell itself to execs and marketing folk, as they can see who is on your site right at the moment. If you want a little more detail from your own logs for a reasonable price, I've often used Sawmill to great effect. AWStats is also popular with the more technical FOS community.

Can you explain (basic) how you set up a dev server and then deploy to live? (what are common issues)?

This is enormously variable based on your server architecture, your connections and your technical decisions. On a Microsoft stack, Microsoft provide tools such as Web Farm Framework and Web Deploy which can be a great help and offer a lot of heavy lifting. Some people with simpler sites are happy with FTP or WebDAV deployments. We use our own cocktail of Powershell scripts and Robocopy to manage our servers and keep them up to date, but we won't test you on that afterwards.

How can you define a custom 404 page easily?

IIS has standard support for all the common (and any custom) error pages. The easiest route is to create an HTML page with your 404 content and save it to a folder on your live servers. In the IIS configuration, you then simply locate this page and IIS will do the rest. With more complex ASP.NET MVC sites, you may want to handle your own 404s, bug again that's best left to the developers.

Can you explain how to make friendly (SEO) urls in IIS? What is the process?

Exactly the same way as with any other web server! Name your content well. Avoid special characters, use lower case filenames, be consistent with naming, use slugs where possible to make URLs that search engines will appreciate. If you're writing an application which pulls content from a database, make the URLs as meaningful as possible and avoid varied query strings. All of this is second nature for good SEOs. ASP.NET (or any other flavour) MVC helps even more as the URL routing allows the developers more control of exactly what the URL will look like, rather than having to rely only on filenames. If you use a content management system, make sure that you know how to configure correctly - most popular CMS products have this boiled in these days.

What do you mean by rewriting as opposed to redirecting?

In simple terms, imagine you have two files - a.htm and b.htm.

If you are using rewriting, someone will look at a.htm in a browser (and the address bar will still show http://site.com/a.htm), but you will actually see the content of b.htm.

If you are using the more common redirect method, when someone asks for a.htm with their browser, they will be sent to b.htm in the server. The address bar will now show http://www.site.com/b.htm For SEO purposes, this means that a spider won't be able to tell the difference between a.htm and b.htm if you're rewriting. If you're redirecting, you can give powerful instructions to the spider, such as a 301 response, asserting that the value of the b.htm should now be carried to a.htm. In most cases, you probably only need to worry about using redirects, as these are widely used and understood. Rewriting is often an edge case, or something used by developers for their own nefarious purposes.

Give me a good reason why I should use IIS 7 over previous versions?

IIS7 - now actually IIS7.5 in Windows 2008 R2 - was a huge improvement over IIS6. Native support for gzip compression, the newly integrated ASP.NET pipeline and performance and security improvements should be enough. If not, Windows 2008 is a far nicer Operating System to use than 2003 (now it's been patched a few times), and migrating will make your life a much more pleasant place to be. Do watch out for slow file copying though, a relic of it's Windows Vista brethren.

A few more helpful links

• IIS URL rewriting & ASP routing
• Fixing common SEO problems with the URL rewrite extension
• ASP, NET, MVC and the new IIS 7 rewrite module
• Explore The Web Server For Windows Vista And Beyond

 

Feel free to follow me on Twitter @dsottimano, don't forget to randomly hug a developer - even if they say they don't like it :)

“No one saw the panda uprising coming. One day, they were frolicking in our zoos. The next, they were frolicking in our entrails. They came for the identical twins first, then the gingers, and then the rest of us. I finally trapped one and asked him the question burning in all of our souls – 'Why?!' He just smiled and said ‘You humans all look alike to me.’”

- Sgt. Jericho “Bamboo” Jackson

Ok, maybe we’re starting to get a bit melodramatic about this whole Panda thing. While it’s true that Panda didn’t change everything about SEO, I think it has been a wake-up call about SEO issues we’ve been ignoring for too long.

One of those issues is duplicate content. While duplicate content as an SEO problem has been around for years, the way Google handles it has evolved dramatically and seems to only get more complicated with every update. Panda has upped the ante even more.

So, I thought it was a good time to cover the topic of duplicate content, as it stands in 2011, in depth. This is designed to be a comprehensive resource – a complete discussion of what duplicate content is, how it happens, how to diagnose it, and how to fix it. Maybe we’ll even round up a few rogue pandas along the way.

I. What Is Duplicate Content?

Let’s start with the basics. Duplicate content exists when any two (or more) pages share the same content. If you’re a visual learner, here’s an illustration for you:

Easy enough, right? So, why does such a simple concept cause so much difficulty? One problem is that people often make the mistake of thinking that a “page” is a file or document sitting on their web server. To a crawler (like Googlebot), a page is any unique URL it happens to find, usually through internal or external links. Especially on large, dynamic sites, creating two URLs that land on the same content is surprisingly easy (and often unintentional).

II. Why Do Duplicates Matter?

Duplicate content as an SEO issue was around long before the Panda update, and has taken many forms as the algorithm has changed. Here’s a brief look at some major issues with duplicate content over the years…

The Supplemental Index

In the early days of Google, just indexing the web was a massive computational challenge. To deal with this challenge, some pages that were seen as duplicates or just very low quality were stored in a secondary index called the “supplemental” index. These pages automatically became 2nd-class citizens, from an SEO perspective, and lost any competitive ranking ability.

Around late 2006, Google integrated supplemental results back into the main index, but those results were still often filtered out. You know you’ve hit filtered results anytime you see this warning at the bottom of a Google SERP:

Even though the index was unified, results were still “omitted”, with obvious consequences for SEO. Of course, in many cases, these pages really were duplicates or had very little search value, and the practical SEO impact was negligible, but not always.

The Crawl “Budget”

It’s always tough to talk limits when it comes to Google, because people want to hear an absolute number. There is no absolute crawl budget or fixed number of pages that Google will crawl on a site. There is, however, a point at which Google may give up crawling your site for a while, especially if you keep sending spiders down winding paths.

Although the “budget” isn’t absolute, even for a given site, you can get a sense of Google’s crawl allocation for your site in Google Webmaster Tools (under “Diagnostics” > “Crawl Stats”):

So, what happens when Google hits so many duplicate paths and pages that it gives up for the day? Practically, the pages you want indexed may not get crawled. At best, they probably won’t be crawled as often.

The Indexation “Cap”

Similarly, there’s no set “cap” to how many pages of a site Google will index. There does seem to be a dynamic limit, though, and that limit is relative to the authority of the site. If you fill up your index with useless, duplicate pages, you may push out more important, deeper pages. For example, if you load up on 1000s of internal search results, Google may not index all of your product pages. Many people make the mistake of thinking that more indexed pages is better. I’ve seen too many situations where the opposite was true. All else being equal, bloated indexes dilute your ranking ability.

The Penalty Debate

Long before Panda, a debate would erupt every few months over whether or not there was a duplicate content penalty. While these debates raised valid points, they often focused on semantics – whether or not duplicate content caused a Capital-P Penalty. While I think the conceptual difference between penalties and filters is important, the upshot for a site owner is often the same. If a page isn’t ranking (or even indexed) because of duplicate content, then you’ve got a problem, no matter what you call it.

The Panda Update

Since Panda (starting in February 2011), the impact of duplicate content has become much more severe in some cases. It used to be that duplicate content could only harm that content itself. If you had a duplicate, it might go supplemental or get filtered out. Usually, that was ok. In extreme cases, a large number of duplicates could bloat your index or cause crawl problems and start impacting other pages.

Panda made duplicate content part of a broader quality equation – now, a duplicate content problem can impact your entire site. If you’re hit by Panda, non-duplicate pages may lose ranking power, stop ranking altogether, or even fall out of the index. Duplicate content is no longer an isolated problem.

III. Three Kinds of Duplicates

Before we dive into examples of duplicate content and the tools for dealing with them, I’d like to cover 3 broad categories of duplicates. They are: (1) True Duplicates, (2) Near Duplicates, and (3) Cross-domain Duplicates. I’ll be referencing these 3 main types in the examples later in the post.

(1) True Duplicates

A true duplicate is any page that is 100% identical (in content) to another page. These pages only differ by the URL:

(2) Near Duplicates

A near duplicate differs from another page (or pages) by a very small amount – it could be a block of text, an image, or even the order of the content:

An exact definition of “near” is tough to pin down, but I’ll discuss some examples in detail later.

(3) Cross-domain Duplicates

A cross-domain duplicate occurs when two websites share the same piece of content:

These duplicates could be either “true” or “near” duplicates. Contrary to what some people believe, cross-domain duplicates can be a problem even for legitimate, syndicated content.

IV. Tools for Fixing Duplicates

This may seem out of order, but I want to discuss the tools for dealing with duplicates before I dive into specific examples. That way, I can recommend the appropriate tools to fix each example without confusing anyone.

(1) 404 (Not Found)

Of course, the simplest way to deal with duplicate content is to just remove it and return a 404 error. If the content really has no value to visitors or search, and if it has no significant inbound links or traffic, then total removal is a perfectly valid option.

(2) 301 Redirect

Another way to remove a page is via a 301-redirect. Unlike a 404, the 301 tells visitors (humans and bots) that the page has permanently moved to another location. Human visitors seamlessly arrive at the new page. From an SEO perspective, most of the inbound link authority is also passed to the new page. If your duplicate content has a clear canonical URL, and the duplicate has traffic or inbound links, then a 301-redirect may be a good option.

(3) Robots.txt

Another option is to leave the duplicate content available for human visitors, but block it for search crawlers. The oldest and probably still easiest way to do this is with a robots.txt file (generally located in your root directory). It looks something like this:

One advantage of robots.txt is that it’s relatively easy to block entire folders or even URL parameters. The disadvantage is that it’s an extreme and sometimes unreliable solution. While robots.txt is effective for blocking uncrawled content, it’s not great for removing content already in the index. The major search engines also seem to frown on its overuse, and don’t generally recommend robots.txt for duplicate content.

(4) Meta Robots

You can also control the behavior of search bots at the page level, with a header-level directive known as the “Meta Robots” tag (or sometimes “Meta Noindex”). In its simplest form, the tag looks something like this:

This directive tells search bots not to index this particular page or follow links on it. Anecdotally, I find it a bit more SEO-friendly than Robots.txt, and because the tag can be created dynamically with code, it can often be more flexible.

The other common variant for Meta Robots is the content value “NOINDEX, FOLLOW”, which allows bots to crawl the paths on the page without adding the page to the search index. This can be useful for pages like internal search results, where you may want to block certain variations (I’ll discuss this more later) but still follow the paths to product pages.

One quick note: there is no need to ever add a Meta Robots tag with “INDEX, FOLLOW” to a page. All pages are indexed and followed by default (unless blocked by other means).

(5) Rel=Canonical

In 2009, the search engines banded together to create the Rel=Canonical directive, sometimes called just “Rel-canonical” or the “Canonical Tag”. This allows webmasters to specify a canonical version for any page. The tag goes in the page header (like Meta Robots), and a simple example looks like this:

When search engines arrive on a page with a canonical tag, they attribute the page to the canonical URL, regardless of the URL they used to reach the page. So, for example, if a bot reached the above page using the URL “www.example.com/index.html”, the search engine would not index the additional, non-canonical URL. Typically, it seems that inbound link-juice is also passed through the canonical tag.

It’s important to note that you need to clearly understand what the proper canonical page is for any given website template. Canonicalizing your entire site to just one page or the wrong pages can be catastrophic.

(6) Google URL Removal

In Google Webmaster Tools (GWT), you can request that an individual page (or directory) be manually removed from the index. Click on “Site configuration” > “Crawler access”, and you’ll see a series of 3 tabs. Click on the 3rd tab, “Remove URL”, to get this:

Since this tool only removes one URL or path at a time and is completely at Google’s discretion, it’s usually a last-ditch approach to duplicate content. I just want to be thorough, though, and cover all of your options. An important technical note: you need to 404, Robots.txt block or Meta Noindex the page before requesting removal. Removal via GWT is primarily a last defense when Google is being stubborn.

Update: In the comments, Taylor pointed out that Google lifted the requirement that you have to first block the page to request removal. Removal requests can be done without blocking via other means now, but the removals only last 90 days.

(7) Google Parameter Blocking

You can also use GWT to specify URL parameters that you want Google to ignore (which essentially blocks indexation of pages with those parameters). If you click on “Site Configuration” > “URL parameters”, you’ll get a list something like this:

This list shows URL parameters that Google has detected, as well as the settings for how those parameters should be crawled. Keep in mind that the “Let Googlebot decide” setting doesn’t reflect other blocking tactics, like Robots.txt or Meta Robots. If you click on “Edit”, you’ll get the following options:

Google changed these recently, and I find the new version a bit confusing, but essentially “Yes” means the parameter is important and should be indexed, while “No” means the parameter indicates a duplicate. The GWT tool seems to be effective (and can be fast), but I don’t usually recommend it as a first line of defense. It won’t impact other search engines, and it can’t be read by SEO tools and monitoring software. It could also be modified by Google at any time.

(8) Bing URL Removal

Bing Webmaster Center (BWC) has tools very similar to GWT’s options above. Actually, I think the Bing parameter blocking tool came before Google’s version. To request a URL removal in Bing, click on the “Index” tab and then “Block URLs” > “Block URL and Cache”. You’ll get a pop-up like this:

BWC actually gives you a wider range of options, including blocking a directory and your entire site. Obviously, that last one usually isn’t a good idea.

(9) Bing Parameter Blocking

In the same section of BWC (“Index”), there’s an option called “URL Normalization”. The name implies Bing treats this more like canonicalization, but there’s only one option – “ignore”. Like Google, you get a list of auto-detected parameters and can add or modify them:

As with the GWT tools, I’d consider the Bing versions to be a last resort. Generally, I’d only use these tools if other methods have failed, and one search engine is just giving you grief.

(10) Rel=Prev & Rel=Next

Just this year (September 2011), Google gave us a new tool for fighting a particular form of near-duplicate content – paginated search results. I’ll describe the problem in more detail in the next section, but essentially paginated results are any searches where the results are broken up into chunks, with each chunk (say, 10 results) having its own page/URL.

You can now tell Google how paginated content connects by using a pair of tags much like Rel-Canonical. They’re called Rel-Prev and Rel-Next. Implementation is a bit tricky, but here’s a simple example:

In this example, the search bot has landed on page 3 of search results, so you need two tags: (1) a Rel-Prev pointing to page 2, and (2) a Rel-Next pointing to page 4. Where it gets tricky is that you’re almost always going to have to generate these tags dynamically, as your search results are probably driven by one template.

While initial results suggest these tags do work, they’re not currently honored by Bing, and we really don’t have much data on their effectiveness. I’ll briefly discuss other methods for dealing with paginated content in the next section.

(11) Syndication-Source

In November of 2010, Google introduced a set of tags for publishers of syndicated content. The Meta Syndication-Source directive can be used to indicate the original source of a republished article, as follows:

Even Google’s own advice on when to use this tag and when to use a cross-domain canonical tag are a little bit unclear. Google launched this tag as “experimental”, and I’m not sure they’ve publicly announced a status change. It’s something to watch, but don’t rely on it.

(12) Internal Linking

It’s important to remember that your best tool for dealing with duplicate content is to not create it in the first place. Granted, that’s not always possible, but if you find yourself having to patch dozens of problems, you may need to re-examine your internal linking structure and site architecture.

When you do correct a duplication problem, such as with a 301-redirect or the canonical tag, it’s also important to make your other site cues reflect that change. It’s amazing how often I see someone set a 301 or canonical to one version of a page, and then continue to link internally to the non-canonical version and fill their XML sitemap with non-canonical URLs. Internal links are strong signals, and sending mixed signals will only cause you problems.

(13) Don’t Do Anything

Finally, you can let the search engines sort it out. This is what Google recommended you do for years, actually. Unfortunately, in my experience, especially for large sites, this is almost always a bad idea. It’s important to note, though, that not all duplicate content is a disaster, and Google certainly can filter some of it out without huge consequences. If you only have a few isolated duplicates floating around, leaving them alone is a perfectly valid option.

V. Examples of Duplicate Content

So, now that we’ve worked backwards and sorted out the tools for fixing duplicate content, what does it actually look like in the wild? I’m going to cover a wide range of examples that represent the issues you can expect on a real website. Throughout this section, I’ll reference the solutions listed in Section IV – for example, a reference to a 301-redirect will cite (IV-2).

(1) “www” vs. Non-www

For sitewide duplicate content, this is probably the biggest culprit. Whether you’ve got bad internal paths or have attracted links and social mentions to the wrong URL, you’ve got both the”www” version and non-www (root domain) version of your URLs indexed:

Most of the time, a 301-redirect (IV-2) is your best choice here. This is a common problem, and Google is good about honoring redirects for cases like these.

You may also want to set your preferred address in Google Webmaster Tools. Under “Site Configuration” > “Settings”, you should see a section called “Preferred domain”:

There’s a quirk in GWT where, to set a preferred domain, you may have to create GWT profiles for both your “www” and non-www versions of the site. While this is annoying, it won’t cause any harm. If you’re having major canonicalization issues, I’d recommend it. If you’re not, then you can leave well enough alone and let Google determine the preferred domain.

(2) Staging Servers

While much less common than (1), this problem is often also caused by subdomains. In a typical scenario, you’re working on a new site design for a relaunch, your dev team sets up a subdomain with the new site, and they accidentally leave it open to crawlers. What you end up with is two sets of indexed URLS that look something like this:

Your best bet is to prevent this problem before it happens, by blocking the staging site with Robots.txt (IV-3). If you find your staging site indexed, though, you’ll probably need to 301-redirect (IV-2) those pages or Meta Noindex them (IV-4).

(3) Trailing Slashes ("/")

This is a problem people often have questions about, although it's less of an SEO issue than it once was. Technically, in the original HTTP protocol, a URL with a trailing slash and one without it were different URLs. Here's a simple example:

These days, almost all browsers automatically add the trailing slash behind the scenes and resolve both versions the same way. Matt Cutts did a recent video suggesting that Google automatically canonicalizes these URLs in "the vast majority of cases".

(4) Secure (https) Pages

If your site has secure pages (designated by the “https:” protocol), you may find that both secure and non-secure versions are getting indexed. This most frequently happens when navigation links from secure pages – like shopping cart pages – also end up secured, usually due to relative paths, creating variants like this:

Ideally, these problems are solved by the site-architecture itself. In many cases, it’s best to Noindex (IV-4) secure pages – shopping cart and check-out pages have no place in the search index. After the fact, though, your best option is a 301-redirect (IV-2). Be cautious with any sitewide solutions – if you 301-redirect all “https:” pages to their “http:” versions, you could end up removing security entirely. This is a tricky problem to solve and should be handled carefully.

(5) Home-page Duplicates

While problems (1)-(3) can all create home-page duplicates, the home-page has a couple unique problems of its own. The most typical problem is that both the root domain and the actual home-page document name get indexed. For example:

Although this problem can be solved with a 301-redirect (IV-2), it’s often a good idea to put a canonical tag on your home-page (IV-5). Home pages are uniquely afflicted by duplicates, and a proactive canonical tag can prevent a lot of problems.

Of course, it’s important to also be consistent with your internal paths (IV-12). If you want the root version of the URL to be canonical, but then link to “/index.htm” in your navigation, you’re sending mixed signals to Google every time the crawlers visit.

(6) Session IDs

Some websites (especially e-commerce platforms) tag each new visitor with a tracking parameter. On occasion, that parameter ends up in the URL and gets indexed, creating something like this:

That image really doesn’t do the problem justice, because in reality you can end up with a duplicate for every single session ID and page combination that gets indexed. Session IDs in the URL can easily add 1000s of duplicate pages to your index.

The best option, if possible on your site/platform, is to remove the session ID from the URL altogether and store it in a cookie. There are very few good reasons to create these URLs, and no reason to let bots crawl them. If that’s not feasible, implementing the canonical tag (IV-5) sitewide is a good bet. If you really get stuck, you can block the parameter in Google Webmaster Tools (IV-7) and Bing Webmaster Central (IV-9).

(7) Affiliate Tracking

This problem looks a lot like (6) and happens when sites provide a tracking variable to their affiliates. This variable is typically appended to landing page URLs, like so:

The damage is usually a bit less extreme than (5), but it can still cause large-scale duplication. The solutions are similar to session IDs. Ideally, you can capture the affiliate ID in a cookie and 301-redirect (IV-3) to the canonical version of the page. Otherwise, you’ll probably either need to use canonical tags (IV-5) or block the affiliate URL parameter.

(8) Duplicate Paths

Having duplicate paths to a page is perfectly fine, but when duplicate paths generate duplicate URLs, then you’ve got a problem. Let’s say a product page can be reached one of 3 ways:

Here, the iPad2 product page can be reached by 2 categories and a user-generated tag. User-generated tags are especially problematic, because they can theoretically spawn unlimited versions of a page.

Ideally, these path-based URLs shouldn’t be created at all. However a page is navigated to, it should only have one URL for SEO purposes. Some will argue that including navigation paths in the URL is a positive cue for site visitors, but even as someone with a usability background, I think the cons almost always outweigh the pros here.

If you already have variations indexed, then a 301-redirect (IV-2) or canonical tag (IV-5) are probably your best options. In many cases, implementing the canonical tag will be easier, since there may be too many variations to easily redirect. Long-term, though, you’ll need to re-evaluate your site architecture.

(9) Functional Parameters

Functional parameters are URL parameters that change a page slightly but have no value for search and are essentially duplicates. For example, let’s say that all of your product pages have a printable version, and that version has its own URL:

Here, the “print=1” URL variable indicates a printable version, which normally would have the same content but a modified template. Your best bet is to not index these at all, with something like a Meta Noindex (IV-4), but you could also use a canonical tag (IV-5) to consolidate these pages.

(10) International Duplicates

These duplicates occur when you have content for different countries which share the same language, all hosted on the same root domain (it could be subfolders or subdomains). For example, you may have an English version of your product pages for the US, UK, and Australia:

Unfortunately, this one’s a bit tough – in some cases, Google will handle it perfectly well and rank the appropriate content in the appropriate countries. In other cases, even with proper geo-targeting, they won’t. It’s often better to target the language itself than the country, but there are legitimate reasons to split off country-specific content, such as pricing.

If your international content does get treated as duplicate content, there’s no easy answer. If you 301-redirect, you lose the page for visitors. If you use the canonical tag, then Google will only rank one version of the page. The “right” solution can be highly situational and really depends on the risk-reward tradeoff (and the scope of the filter/penalty).

(11) Search Sorts

So far, all of the examples I’ve given have been true duplicates. I’d like to dive into a few examples of “near” duplicates, since that concept is a bit fuzzy. A few common examples pop up with internal search engines, which tend to spin off many variants – sortable results, filters, and paginated results being the most frequent problems.

Search sort duplicates pop up whenever a sort (ascending/descending) creates a separate URL. While the two sorted results are technically different pages, they add no additional value to the search index and contain the same content, just in a different order. URLs might look like:

In most cases, it’s best just to block the sortable versions completely, usually by adding a Meta Noindex (IV-4) selectively to pages called with that parameter. In a pinch, you could block the sort parameter in Google Webmaster Tools (IV-7) and Bing Webmaster Central (IV-9).

(12) Search Filters

Search filters are used to narrow an internal search – it could be price, color, features, etc. Filters are very common on e-commerce sites that sell a wide variety of products. Search filter URLs look a lot like search sorts, in many cases:

The solution here is similar to (11) – don’t index the filters. As long as Google has a clear path to products, indexing every variant usually causes more harm than good.

(13) Search Pagination

Pagination is an easy problem to describe and an incredibly difficult one to solve. Any time you split internal search results into separate pages, you have paginated content. The URLs are easy enough to visualize:

Of course, over 100s of results, one search can easily spin out dozens of near duplicates. While the results themselves differ, many important features of the pages (Titles, Meta Descriptions, Headers, copy, template, etc.) are identical. Add to that the problem that Google isn’t a big fan of “search within search” (having their search pages land on yours).

In the past, Google has said to let them sort pagination out – problem is, they haven’t done it very well. Recently, Google introduced Rel=Prev and Rel=Next (IV-10). Initial data suggests these tags work, but we don’t have much data, they’re difficult to implement, and Bing doesn’t currently support them.

You have 3 other, viable options (in my opinion), although how and when they’re viable depends a lot on the situation:

1. You can Meta Noindex,Follow pages 2+ of search results. Let Google crawl the paginated content but don’t let them index it.
2. You can create a “View All” page that links to all search results at one URL, and let Google auto-detect it. This seems to be Google’s other preferred option.
3. You can create a “View All” page and set the canonical tag of paginated results back to that page. This is unofficially endorsed, but the pages aren’t really duplicates in the traditional sense, so some claim it violates the intent of Rel-canonical.

Adam Audette has a recent, in-depth discussion of search pagination that I highly recommend. Pagination for SEO is a very difficult topic and well beyond the scope of this post.

(14) Product Variations

Product variant pages are pages that branch off from the main product page and only differ by one feature or option. For example, you might have a page for each color a product comes in:

It can be tempting to want to index every color variation, hoping it pops up in search results, but in most cases I think the cons outweigh the pros. If you have a handful of product variations and are talking about dozens of pages, fine. If product variations spin out into 100s or 1000s, though, it’s best to consolidate. Although these pages aren’t technically true duplicates, I think it’s ok to Rel-canonical (IV-5) the options back up to the main product page.

One site note: I purposely used “static” URLs in this example to demonstrate a point. Just because a URL doesn’t have parameters, that doesn’t make it immune to duplication. Static URLs (parameter-free) may look prettier, but they can be duplicates just as easily as dynamic URLs.

(15) Geo-keyword Variations

Once upon a time, “local SEO” meant just copying all of your pages 100s of times, adding a city name to the URL, and swapping out that city in the page copy. It created URLs like these:

In 2011, not only is local SEO a lot more sophisticated, but these pages are almost always going to look like near-duplicates. If you have any chance of ranking, you’re going to need to invest in legitimate, unique content for every geographic region you spin out. If you aren’t willing to make that investment, then don’t create the pages. They’ll probably backfire.

(16) Other “Thin” Content

This isn’t really an example, but I wanted to stop and explain a word we throw around a lot when it comes to content: “thin”. While thin content can mean a variety of things, I think many examples of thin content are near-duplicates like (14) above. Whenever you have pages that vary by only a tiny percentage of content, you risk those pages looking low-value to Google. If those pages are heavy on ads (with more ads than unique content), you’re at even more risk. When too much of your site is thin, it’s time to revisit your content strategy.

(17) Syndicated Content

These last 3 examples all relate to cross-domain content. Here, the URLs don’t really matter – they could be wildly different. Examples (17) and (18) only differ by intent. Syndicated content is any content you use with permission from another site. However you retrieve and integrate it, that content is available on another site (and, often, many sites).

While syndication is legitimate, it’s still likely that one or more copies will get filtered out of search results. You could roll the dice and see what happens (IV-13), but conventional SEO wisdom says that you should link back to the source and probably set up a cross-domain canonical tag (IV-5). A cross-domain canonical looks just like a regular canonical, but with a reference to someone else’s domain.

Of course, a cross-domain canonical tag means that, assuming Google honors the tag, your page won’t get indexed or rank. In some cases, that’s fine – you’re using the content for its value to visitors. Practically, I think it depends on the scope. If you occasionally syndicate content to beef up your own offerings but also have plenty of unique material, then link back and leave it alone. If a larger part of your site is syndicated content, then you could find yourself running into trouble. Unfortunately, using the canonical tag (IV-5) means you'll lose the ranking ability of that content, but it could keep you from getting penalized or having Panda-related problems.

(18) Scraped Content

Scraped content is just like syndicated content, except that you didn’t ask permission (and might even be breaking the law). The best solution: QUIT BREAKING THE LAW!

Seriously, no de-duping solution is going to satisfy the scrapers among you, because most solutions will knock your content out of ranking contention. The best you can do is pad the scraped content with as much of your own, unique content as possible.

(19) Cross-ccTLD Duplicates

Finally, it’s possible to run into trouble when you copy same-language content across countries – see example (9) above – even with separate Top-Level Domains (TLDs). Fortunately, this problem is fairly rare, but we see it with English-language content and even with some European languages. For example, I frequently see questions about Dutch content on Dutch and Belgian domains ranking improperly.

Unfortunately, there’s no easy answer here, and most of the solutions aren’t traditional duplicate-content approaches. In most cases, you need to work on your targeting factors and clearly show Google that the domain is tied to the country in question.

VI. Which URL Is Canonical?

I’d like to take a quick detour to discuss an important question – whether you use a 301-redirect or a canonical tag, how do you know which URL is actually canonical? I often see people making a mistake like this:

The problem is that “product.php” is just a template – you’ve now collapsed all of your products down to a single page (that probably doesn’t even display a product). In this case, the canonical version probably includes a parameter, like “id=1234”.

The canonical page isn’t always the simplest version of the URL – it’s the simplest version of the URL that generates UNIQUE content. Let’s say you have these 3 URLs that all generate the same product page:

Two of these versions are essentially duplicates, and the “print” and “session” parameters represent variations on the main product page that should be de-duped. The “id” parameter is essential to the content, though – it determines which product is actually being displayed.

So, consider yourself warned. As much trouble as rampant duplicates can be, bad canonicalization can cause even more damage in some cases. Plan carefully, and make absolutely sure you select the correct canonical versions of your pages before consolidating them.

VII. Tools for Diagnosing Duplicates

So, now that you recognize what duplicate content looks like, how do you go about finding it on your own site? Here are a few tools to get you started – I won’t claim it’s a complete list, but it covers the bases:

(1) Google Webmaster Tools

In Google Webmaster Tools, you can pull up a list of duplicate TITLE tags and Meta Descriptions Google has crawled. While these don’t tell the whole story, they’re a good starting point. Many URL-based duplicates will naturally generate identical Meta data. In your GWT account, go to “Diagnostics” > “HTML Suggestions”, and you’ll see a table like this:

You can click on “Duplicate meta descriptions” and “Duplicate title tags” to pull up a list of the duplicates. This is a great first stop for finding your trouble-spots.

(2) Google’s Site: Command

When you already have a sense of where you might be running into trouble and need to take a deeper dive, Google’s “site:” command is a very powerful and flexible tool. What really makes “site:” powerful is that you can use it in conjunction with other search operators.

Let’s say, for example, that you’re worried about home-page duplicates. To find out if Google has indexed any copies of your home-page, you could use the “site:” command with the “intitle:” operator, like this:

Put the title in quotes to capture the full phrase, and always use the root domain (leave off “www”) when making a wide sweep for duplicate content. This will detect both “www” and non-www versions.

Another powerful combination is “site:” plus the “inurl:” operator. You could use this to detect parameters, such as the search-sort problem mentioned above:

The “inurl:” operator can also detect the protocol used, which is handy for finding out whether any secure (https:) copies of your pages have been indexed:

You can also combine the “site:” operator with regular search text, to find near-duplicates (such as blocks of repeated content). To search for a block of content across your site, just include it in quotes:

I should also mention that searching for a unique block of content in quotes is a cheap and easy way to find out if people have been scraping your site. Just leave off the “site:” operator and search for a long or unique block entirely in quotes.

Of course, these are just a few examples, but if you really need to dig deep, these simple tools can be used in powerful ways. Ultimately, the best way to tell if you have a duplicate content problem is to see what Google sees.

(3) SEOmoz Campaign Manager

If you’re an SEOmoz PRO member, you have access to some additional tools for spotting duplicates in your Campaigns. In addition to duplicate page titles, the Campaign manager will detect duplicate content on the pages themselves. You can see duplicate pages we’ve detected from the Campaign Overview screen:

Click on the “Duplicate Page Content” link and you’ll not only see a list of potential duplicates, but you’ll get a graph of how your duplicate count has changed over time:

The historical graph can be very useful for determining if any recent changes you’ve made have created (or resolved) duplicate content issues.

Just a technical note, since it comes up a lot in Q&A – Our system currently uses a threshold of 95% to determine whether content is duplicated. This is based on the source code (not the text copy), so the amount of actual duplicate content may vary depending on the code/content ratio.

(4) Your Own Brain

Finally, it’s important to remember to use your own brain. Finding duplicate content often requires some detective work, and over-relying on tools can leave some gaps in what you find. One critical step is to systematically navigate your site to find where duplicates are being created. For example, does your internal search have sorts and filters? Do those sorts and filters get translated into URL variables, and are they crawlable? If they are, you can use the “site:” command to dig deeper. Even finding a handful of trouble spots using your own sleuthing skills can end up revealing 1000s of duplicate pages, in my experience.

I Hope That Covers It

If you’ve made it this far: congratulations – you’re probably as exhausted as I am. I hope that covers everything you’d want to know about the state of duplicate content in 2011, but if not, I’d be happy to answer questions in the comments. Dissenting opinions are welcome, too. Some of these topics, like pagination, are extremely tricky in practice, and there’s often not one “right” answer. Finally, if you liked my panda mini-poster, here’s a link to a larger version of Pandas Take No Prisoners.

Wow! Duplicate content has gotten even more technical.

November 2011 | As deal hunting has become an integral part of daily life for millions of consumers, it’s time to dive into the drivers behind this trend and its long term impact on all B2C brands. And yes, countless examples are included ;-)

NEW: We are working hard on our 2012 Trend Report, due 21 November 2011. Highlighting all the consumer trends, insights and innovations that need to be on your radar in 2012. More info, including how to secure your early-bird discount, is here »

Source: thinkcvox

We touched on PRICING PANDEMONIUM before, but it’s more than time for a full Trend Briefing on this phenomenon, looking at not just the many new and innovative ways in which brands are using promotions and offers, but how consumer attitudes to discounts and deals are changing.

In fact, the avalanche of deals currently available to consumers are not just a short-term symptom of the financial crisis; DEALER-CHIC is here to stay:

DEALER-CHIC | Consumers have always loved getting good deals or exclusive rewards, but rather than having to hide one’s haggling, securing the best deal is now accepted, if not admired by one’s fellow consumers. Deal hunting will continue to be an integral part of consumers’ lives, as it's now about more than just saving money: it’s the thrill, the pursuit, the control, and the perceived smartness, and thus a source of status too.

Now, we're not saying that all of consumption will be dominated by discounted goods and services. However, for status-conscious consumers (read: all of them ;-), making the most of discounts and deals is no longer considered cumbersome or even embarrassing, but simply smart.

In fact, DEALER-CHIC is yet another example of the longer-term shifts playing out in the consumer arena, where savvy consumers have more choice, higher expectations, and more control, while mature consumers have an ever-less reverential relationship to brands.

So, here are just three reasons why DEALER-CHIC is set to get bigger and bigger in the coming years:

1. MORE FOR LESS: While many people in developed economies may have less money to spend right now, consumers everywhere will forever look to experience more.
2. THE MEDIUM IS THE MOTIVATION: Consumers are now being alerted to, using, reusing and sharing offers and deals via new (and therefore infinitely more exciting and attractive) technologies.
3. BEST OF THE BEST: With instant mobile or online access to not only deals but reviews as well, consumers can now be confident they’re getting the best price for the best product or service.

1. MORE FOR LESS

People want to experience more, even when they have less to spend.

Source: Groupon

There’s no overlooking the fact that many consumers in mature markets like Europe, Japan and Northern America are at the very least fearful of their financial futures, meaning that any kind of deal or discount is welcomed with open arms.*

But even those consumers who don’t need to scrimp and save (including the middle classes in emerging markets), are still enthusiastically seeking out deals in almost every purchase, from everyday staples to one-off indulgences.

Why? Because for consumers driven by collecting as many and as varied experiences as possible, every cent, yen or penny saved, means more to spend on new products, services and ultimately experiences.

As our recent Trend Briefing on RECOMMERCE showed, consumers are embracing anything that unlocks new experiences at lower cost (such as trading in used possessions), and DEALER-CHIC is yet another part of this phenomenon.

Some MORE FOR LESS indicators:

• When asked about eight money saving strategies, buying items on sale (59%) or using coupons (48%) were the top two answers from consumers around the world. Coupons were most popular in China (67%), the US (66%) and Hong Kong (65%). While only just over a third of European (37%) and US (36%) consumers report shopping at value retailers to save money (Source: Nielsen, October 2011).

• 62% of US consumers rarely pay full price for clothing and 58% of UK consumers "don't like paying full price for anything" (Source: Mintel, September 2011).

• 81% of US consumers think it's fun to see how much money they can save by using coupons or their shopper loyalty card (Source: Deloitte 2010 American Pantry Survey, July 2010).

• Over 40% of coupon ‘enthusiasts’ had a household income of over USD 70,000 (Source: Neilsen, April 2010).

• In India, 10.4% of the online population accessed a deal site in June 2011, with the market leader Snapdeal.com tripling its audience from the past year (Source: comScore, July 2011).

• Leisure, movies and dining accounted for over 50% of the Chinese daily deal market in August 2011 (Source: Dataotuan, September 2011).

• In September 2011, the top 10 grossing ‘daily deal’ offers in the US included a USD 399 seven-night resort stay, a USD 6 burger meal, a USD 5 movie ticket and soda deal, and a USD 70 Cirque de Soleil theater ticket (Source: Yipit, September 2011).

* Showing some empathy and compassion shouldn’t be a new trend for any business professional. In fact, we recommend that anyone waiting for the crisis to pass before reverting back to a purely profit-driven, ‘business-as-usual’ corporate mindset, stops reading now and checks out our Trend Briefing on GENERATION G from way back in February 2009.

2. THE MEDIUM IS THE MOTIVATION

Deals are now a source of tech and online innovation, and thus smart, cool and fun to switched-on consumers.

Let’s look at ‘classic’ deals for a moment, especially paper coupons: they were fiddly, generic, required forward planning and needed to be publicly processed at the cash desk, none of which made them attractive to consumers. It didn’t help that most savings were focused on getting 10 cents off a can of tuna, versus the many entertainment-heavy discounts to be had in 'Coupon World 2.0'.

Now discounts and deals are increasingly innovative and attractive in where, when and how they are delivered and redeemed. They can be sourced online or via smartphones at the right moment. Deals can be hyper-personalized or shared with friends. They can be exclusive, convenient or fun. Even securing and redeeming them (when using a smartphone, for all to see), can be a source of accomplishment or status.

All of this drives DEALER-CHIC: deals are now relevant, timely and interesting; using them is savvy, sophisticated and perfect for experience-hungry consumers.

Some indicators:

• Online coupons account for only 1% of all coupons distributed, but 10% of those that are redeemed (Source: Catalina, April 2011).

• 79% of smartphone owners use their phones for shopping related activities, and of those nearly half (48%) use their phones to look for or use discounts and coupons (Source: Google & IPSOS, April 2011).

• 53% of Chinese and 47% of Korean smartphone owners have used mobile coupons to purchase products in-store. Comparative figures for other countries are: 22% US, 14% UK and Turkey, 13% Spain, 11% Germany, 10% France and 7% The Netherlands (Source: Google & IPSOS, July 2011).

• 67% of mobile users agree that location-based coupons on a mobile device are "convenient and useful", while 42% say they have already used a mobile coupon of some kind (Source: Prosper Mobile Insights, October 2011).

3. BEST OF THE BEST

Why consumers can be increasingly confident they are getting the best price and the best product.

DEALER-CHIC doesn't mean an endless race to the bottom, where promotions dictate where and when consumers buy. Not because consumers won’t seek out deals and discounts (because they will), but because poor quality businesses will no longer simply be able to turn to promotions to attract customers, as consumers are able to instantly check reviews and ratings* before they make a purchase. And a bad product or service will be a bad deal at any price ;-)

Just one example:

Launched in November 2010, SNIQUEaway is an invite-only travel deals website operated by US based Smarter Travel Media (owner of TripAdvisor). The limited-time-only deals, all feature four star or more properties that were given the highest ratings in TripAdvisor reviews, ensuring each deal is pre-vetted.

* Our recent Trend Briefing on RETAIL RENAISSANCE highlighted how for growing numbers of consumers, the online world is blending with the real world to a degree where OFF=ON. And with the omnipresence of all things online comes online expectations: instant price transparency, reviews, comparisons and direct deals, 24/7.

INCOMPARABLE

The counter-trend to DEALER-CHIC: desirable stuff that doesn’t have to be discounted because there’s no alternative for it.

For every trend there’s a counter trend, as no trend applies uniformly to all consumers or all brands. Yes, more brands than ever before will experiment with imaginative ways to offer deals and discounts (and some of them won’t even seem like deals), and yes, consumers will be able to take advantage of promotions in almost every product category.

But we’ll also see the rise of INCOMPARABLE offerings: products and services that are of such high quality, so unique, so authentic, so personalized, or so immediate that consumers won’t be able to (or even want to) look for reviews, price comparisons, discounts or deals. One to keep in mind if you feel DEALER-CHIC is not a trend you want to be part of.

NEXT

An even bigger 'deal ecosystem', more personalization, more loyalty schemes, more pressure on brands to deliver deal-immune brilliance as an integral part of everything they sell and promote.

So how will DEALER-CHIC evolve in the year to come? Some pointers:

• Consumers will become even more conditioned in expecting deals for anything.

• There will be no deal-fatigue as both deal-fueled impulse buying and targeted search for deals get more sophisticated, moving away from the current shotgun approach:

• Impulse buys will be triggered by ever more curated, more targeted offers to consumers based on (known) profile and preferences. These offers will 'find consumers', not the other way around. Basically, permission based deals.
• Targeted search for deals will become more relevant and accurate, as localized and real-time deals proliferate.

• Deal sites will focus much more on loyalty, using deals to attract new, loyal customers (and reward existing ones). This will further reduce (or even eliminate) any stigma attached to brands that offer deals.

• Real-time reviews of any deal will be easier to find, if not automatically accompanying the deals.

• More brands will justify ‘full’ prices by adding or highlighting anything that’s INCOMPARABLE about their product or service.

EXAMPLES

Enough theory. Learn from the examples below of brands and business already making deals more mobile, relevant, instant, cool, integrated, seamless, interactive and yes, fun!

DAILY DEALS

Of course, it’s impossible to look at DEALER-CHIC without acknowledging the daily deal phenomenon. Whatever the potential flaws in Groupon’s business model, over doubling their mailing list from 50 million at the end of 2010 to 115 million by August 2011, shows that for consumers at least, they are doing something right (Source: Reuters).

Indeed, is there any niche where consumers can’t receive daily deals via email? Just a few recent spottings:

• Sports | CrowdSeats offers subscribers up to 90% off sports tickets in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Boston and Chicago.

• Travel | Groupon Getaways sold USD 9.6 million worth of holidays in its first full month after launch (Source: Yipit, September 2011). Other travel deals sites include Living Social Escapes and Yuupon. While Travelzoo Local Deals focuses on restaurant, event or leisure deals that appeal to consumers on vacation.

• Entertainment | Goldstar sells half-price event tickets to venues including Cirque du Soleil and Madison Square Garden.

• Nightlife | Poggled offers deals for bars and clubs in New York and Chicago.

• Food | Gilt Taste offers deals on luxury, artisanal foods, while Munch on Me offers deals on single dishes at featured restaurants and bars.

• Groceries | In August 2011, Aisle50 launched in the US, offering consumers the opportunity to buy one deal each day on groceries such as food products, with price points generally in the 3-10 USD bracket.

• Lifestyle | Zipongo focuses on deals that encourage healthy eating and living, while Heartsy is a group-buying site offering deals on Etsy sellers' products.

• Music | groopEase offers deals on albums from up-and-coming artists at discounts of up to 75%, RCRD Deals offers music products and experiences ranging from band discographies to backstage VIP experiences, and 1band 1brand offers weekly deals on an emerging fashion brand and music artist.

• Education | In September 2011, The National Louis University in Chicago in the US became the first educational establishment in the world to sell a course on a daily deal site.

• Financial Services | In July 2011, Dutch financial institution ING ran a deal in Canada offering CAD 185 when the user opened an ING Thrive account.

• Kids | DoodleDeals partnered with Diapers.com to offer subscribers kids themed deals.

• Pets | Coupawz offers deals on products for dogs, cats and other pets.

• LGBT | The Daily Hookup has a team of curators who vet the site’s gay-friendly fashion, nightlife and vacation deals.

• Adult | ExoticDeals features a new adult-only deal every 69 hours, while marijuana-lovers can receive deals from WeedMaps.

RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW

New technologies (Apps! NFC! Alerts!) have made deals and discounts all about NOWISM and the here-and-now, and the preserve of early adopters (therefore exciting and very DEALER-CHIC ;-).

Check out these services helping consumers find the deals going on right around them:

• Notikum is a real-time, location-based app for Singaporeans which enables users to find deals near them, organized into categories of "Shop", "Eat" and "Play".

• Groupon launched Groupon Now on its mobile apps in April 2011. Users can get short-term deals (often valid only for a few hours or at specific times) for local businesses.

• Touchtown is an Israeli developed app that shows customers deals in their vicinity.

• Valpak’s mobile apps allow users to see coupons overlaid onto their phone’s camera, as well as a map.

A number of services are also enabling consumers to opt-in to alerts for nearby deals:

• Brouha is a mobile messaging platform that allows customers to receive offers and information when in-store, without having to reveal personal data.

• QuickerFeet is an app that enables retailers in AMP Shopping Centers in Australia and New Zealand to notify nearby shoppers of new promotions.

• AT&T’s ShopAlerts and O2's Priority Moments services can alert the networks' customers to exclusive offers and deals based on their location.

And there are a number of services to help those who are out-and-about looking for specific deals:

• BiteHunter is an app which searches restaurant portals and social networks to show users nearby dining deals in real time.

• Willcall enables users in San Francisco to search and purchase half price same-day tickets for live theater and music events.

• While for those looking for a last minute hotel, Priceline launched their Tonight-Only iOS app in September 2011.

There are even services to help consumers find and use deals once they're in the store:

• In China, during July 2011, South Korean mobile communications firm SK Telecom tested a service synchronizing tablet-equipped shopping carts with consumers’ smartphones to deliver real-time, in-store information using indoor positioning technology.

• Aisle 411 is a shopping app that helps shoppers find where products are located in stores, and delivers available digital coupons to users’ smartphones. Shoppers can also get points for various activities (such as mapping a list, or searching for and sharing items), which may unlock further offers from selected retailers and brands.

One final example to show just how smart local deals are becoming:

• ThinkNear automatically generates coupons during businesses' slow trading hours. Companies inform ThinkNear about their typical slow periods, and a range of discounts to be offered during such times. ThinkNear also monitors the local environment for factors that could cause slow-downs, such as rain and snow. When such periods occur, ThinkNear automatically generates coupons for nearby consumers, either as ads in mobile apps, or direct real-time alerts to those who’ve opted in.

DEAL ME IN

Consumers know that there are almost always deals out there, but the sheer number of providers and platforms makes it difficult to know how to find them. Which of course means there’s a big win for anyone or anything that can flag or even create deals, which are relevant or tailored to consumers’ personal interests:

• American Express launched its Link-Like-Love social commerce program in July 2011. The free service gives AMEX cardholders relevant deals and experiences based on their likes, interests and social connections on Facebook.

• Launched in June 2011, KoalaDeal provides users with a customized list of daily deals. Users begin by teaching KoalaDeal about their tastes and interests; they can choose categories manually, or let the site scan their past purchases in Gmail, or their interests as indicated on Facebook or Twitter. Using this information, KoalaDeal searches over 45 daily deals sites for relevant offers to present the user with.

• In July 2011, location-based social network Foursquare started showing users deals from Living Social, Gilt Groupe, AT&T and Groupon. The service also introduced a feature where users who had added a venue to their to-do list were notified if a deal became available at the venue.

• Delta Air Lines announced in July 2011 they were partnering with Living Social to enable users to receive local deals for the places they are traveling to. Customers only receive offers which are valid during their trip, and are automatically unsubscribed at the end of their trip.

REWARD INC.

Watching new customers get great deals is a sure-fire irritant for regular patrons. Especially when new technologies make it easier than ever to reward loyal customers with special deals:

• Daily deal site Bloomspot launched their PRIME service in Q2 2011. The service integrates with retailers’ credit card systems, to give customers rewards based on the total amount spent and for repeat visits. The company claims that these rewards mean customers spend an average of 50% more than the value of the coupon.

• In March 2011, location-based gaming platform SCVNGR launched a mobile payment service LevelUp that mixes deals with rewards for repeat customers. LevelUp offers customers a daily deal of USD 5, 10 or 20 credit at a featured merchant, redeemed when paying with the service’s QR code-based mobile app. Customers can unlock further credit with additional purchases.

• Launched in September 2011, Groupon Rewards creates a new class of deal only available to customers who have spent a minimum sum with a merchant. The service works with existing point-of-sale systems when customers use a credit or debit card they registered with Groupon.

• The Target RedCard, the retailer’s own-branded credit and debit card offers shoppers a 5% discount on all purchases. Lowe's own-branded cards offer customers a similar discount.

• In September 2011 Danish supermarket Netto teamed up with telecoms operator TDC to create their Nettalk mobile service. Customers register their supermarket loyalty cards to their mobile account, and depending on how much they spend, can earn up to two hours extra talk time per month.

DEALIRIOUS

Of course DEALER-CHIC is more about changing consumer attitudes than new technologies. Coupons were simply about saving money, whereas the new breed of deals are often about making the pursuit of a good deal fun, entertaining and savvy:

• Sneakpeeq is an online deal site however no prices are listed. Instead, users have to click on the item to take a "peeq" and see the price; each "peeq" causes the item's price to decrease, but only until the site’s limited stock runs out. Shoppers have 15 seconds to click and buy. They can choose to check prices at a later date, although this may mean losing out to another buyer.

• To promote the launch of their Regent Street, London store, Japanese fashion retailer Uniqlo installed the Uniqlo Happy Machine. At various times, the machine would release certain items at heavily discounted prices.

• In May 2011, French supermarket group Carrefour organized the "Hora Mágica" (Magic Hour) for 200 families in Brazil. For one hour the selected customers (all holders of the retailer's loyalty card) had exclusive access to the store in Osasco, up to a 50% discount on non-food products, and a welcome breakfast.

• In August 2011, the daily deal site Living Social offered passengers in a London taxi the choice of continuing to their destination, or a surprise experience determined by the roll of a die. Experiences included cookery classes and nature visits.

• In September 2011, Stockholm's ICA Vanadis supermarket introduced an initiative where product discounts increased as more customers ‘checked in’ to the retailer on Facebook.

• US based menswear etailer Bonobos ran an ‘online Easter egg hunt’, with promotional codes hidden on pages of Bonobos' site that users could use to claim special offers ranging from 10 to 500 USD off purchases.

• During September and October 2011, US womenswear retailer Lane Bryant promoted its T3 jeans range with an interactive Facebook campaign. Consumers could play the Spin & Win game once a day to try and win a USD 75 gift card redeemable in-store, with 62 prizes available each day.

• In March 2011, US retailer Gap launched a one-off deals site, gapmyprice.com, where shoppers could decide how much they wanted to pay for their khakis and make an offer online. The retailer then put forward its price, which consumers could accept or make a further bid until a final price was agreed on.

• Daitan (a dealership selling used vehicles from Japanese automotive brand Honda) gave Brazilians the opportunity to propose prices for cars on its website. Via the "Faça sua Oferta" ("Make your offer") page, consumers could put forward the figure they wished to pay, and if the offer was accepted Daitan's sales team contacted them to arrange the sale.

• US based ScoreBig offers consumers discounted event and sports tickets. Similar to travel-deal site Priceline, users choose a seating area and make an offer for tickets, which are either accepted or rejected by the venue.

In fact, there’s barely a sector or business that isn’t embracing DEALER-CHIC, even those that would traditionally shy away from discounting:

• In June 2011, luxury fashion brand Oscar de la Renta launched their own private discount club, Backstage Pass to sell discounted items directly to its customers rather than via secondary flash sale sites.

• In May 2011, US based fashion designer Derek Lam put five dresses from his 16-piece 2011 collection, which was shown at New York Fashion Week during February 2011 on eBay. Users of the auction site were asked to vote for their favorite five to determine which of the 16 should go on sale at 'buy it now' fixed prices. 120,000 eBay users voted; priced at USD 175 to USD 225, the dresses were significantly more affordable than Lam's usual creations.

• June 2011 saw US based Savored launch; a members-only website giving users discounts of 30% at a handpicked selection of high-end restaurants in ten cities across the country. Rather than offering customers a 'set deal', restaurants make a certain number of tables available to Savored members, who pay a booking fee of 10 USD to receive a 30% discount. This is applied to the final bill for all food and drink, without the need for coupons or deal codes.
• Users of the Daily Gobble's mobile app can also get deals when eating off-peak at various restaurants in New York. Rather than requiring a coupon, diners upload a photo of their check to receive a Paypal credit.

• In April 2011, US based vacation flash sales site Jetsetter teamed up with private online community ASMALLWORLD to offer ASW members discounted vacation opportunities, curated by Jetsetter.

OPPORTUNITIES

Every B2C brand will have to deal with DEALER-CHIC’s impact, and there are plenty of opportunities to be had.

True entrepreneurs should be wetting themselves at the possibilities that this whole deal ecosystem throws up: from new sectors, to ancillary services, to deal review sites, to new technologies. Because if you get it right, consumers will want to hear from you (but don't forget to keep businesses happy too!).

For brands, DEALER-CHIC is not about giving everything away or wildly slashing prices. The PERFORM OR PERISH message still holds true. Instead, brands should be thinking about the ways in which DEALER-CHIC enables them reach out to (new) audiences, engage with them in novel ways, and help them do the things they want to do at a lower cost.

Last but not least, here's a deal from us for you: our next free Trend Briefing will hit your inbox on 1 December, so make sure you’re subscribed.

Continuous inspiration..

What is “Fun?”

“I’ll know it when I see it.”

In 1964, in Jacobellis v. Ohio, the US Supreme Court needed to decide whether the state of Ohio could ban a film it called “obscene”—a concept people understood but were hard-pressed to define. Justice Potter Stewart, in his concurring opinion, wrote: “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”

As designers, we get a lot of similarly elusive adjectives from clients, as they tell us what they want their sites to be: “The site needs to be ‘cool,’” “It should be ‘exciting,’” “I want it to ‘pop.’” When we ask them to clarify, the answer we get back sounds a lot like “I can’t tell you what it is, but I’ll know it when I see it.”

“Fun” is a particularly difficult concept to define. And we’re starting to hear it a lot more from clients as we design for different contexts of use.

The good news? We all have an idea of what “fun” is. The bad news? The nuances in these ideas—among designers, clients, and most importantly, users—can mean the difference between a successful project and an unsuccessful one.

So what’s a designer to do?

Fortunately, it’s possible to create designs that are “fun” without resorting to the old “I’ll know it when I see it” method. There will always be an element of subjectivity in designing fun, but by defining, researching, building, and measuring, we can develop a long-term approach for incorporating “fun” into our designs. And maybe even have some fun in the process.

Designing for fun

In my experience designing for kids, I’ve had success designing for fun by using a specific set of activities. While there’s no perfect formula, these steps have helped me (and my clients) move past the “I’ll know it when I see it” phenomenon.

Steps for designing fun

• Define It
• Rank It
• Research It
• Task It Out
• Test It

Define It

In the late ’90s, I designed a kids’ website for Georgia Public Television. We had great requirements, a motivated client, a fabulous group of kid collaborators, and super-cool content. We conducted loads of research and iterated through paper prototype tests to make sure we were on the right track. But when we showed our client—we’ll call her Barbara—the first round of design comps, she looked crestfallen. She said, “It’s nice, but it’s not ‘fun.’” We were shocked. What about our beautiful, colorful, inviting screens wasn’t “fun?”

We found out that Barbara’s definition of “fun” was different than ours. She wanted something with movement, and our designs, lovely as they were, didn’t move. Fortunately, in 1998, adding “movement” meant throwing a couple of animated GIFs on the home screen, so we were able to fix the problem pretty quickly. But the larger issue—that we didn’t agree on what “fun” meant—put us at risk of making our client (and potentially our young users) unhappy.

What we should have done at the beginning of the project was operationally define “fun”—to come up with an agreed-upon definition and set of expectations to guide us—and then evaluate that definition with users during research.

Here’s an example of what an operational definition might look like for a similar project:

Operational Definition: “FUN” means engaging six–eight year-old kids and parents in unexpected ways, using characters and videos from XYZ TV show to amuse, inform, and entertain.

For this site to be “fun” it must include:

• motion and sound (both user generated and non-user generated),
• bold colors and background textures,
• imagery instead of text (where possible),
• short, action-oriented copy blocks,
• video clips embedded in the design,
• opportunities for “unexpected” interaction, and
• “game-like” exploration.

You’ll want to evolve the expectations based on what you learn from users, but defining “fun” before you start designing it helps set you up for success.

Once you agree on a definition, look for examples of sites, products, or apps that illustrate that definition, as well as examples of things that don’t. These examples will help clients understand the definition and decide if they agree. They’ll also give you materials to use during research.

Rank It

Figure out how important “fun” is to the site as a whole. Will it fail completely if it’s not fun? Or will adding fun elements distinguish it from its competitors and make it more pleasurable to use? You don’t need complex calculations and quantitative ranking here, just a quick prioritization exercise to see how much or how little you should emphasize fun during the design process.

Here are some questions to use when ranking fun:

1. Why do you want the site to be fun?
2. How will a fun site influence your users? (Will it help/hinder people from completing tasks or getting content?)
3. How does “fun” fit in with the site’s content, message, and actions?
4. How will a fun site affect how people perceive the product or brand?
5. How will your site fare against competitors if it is (or isn’t) fun?

Based on your answers to these questions, rank “fun” on a scale of 1–3, where one is the highest priority and three the lowest.

1. A rank of one means fun is essential to the site’s success. Conduct extensive user research to see if your definition is correct, revise if necessary, then laminate your definition and hang it on the walls of everyone involved in the project. Add the definition to your requirements and enlist project stakeholders in ensuring it is met through the design and functionality.
2. A rank of two means fun will enhance your users’ site experience and differentiate you from competitors. Do some interviews to see if users agree with your definition, and then add it to your requirements as a medium-priority item. Make sure the team keeps the definition in mind when designing.
3. A rank of three means fun will improve the site experience, but users won’t feel a tremendous impact if it’s not fun. Do some quick surveys to see if users define “fun” in the same way you do, and add your definition to the requirements as “nice to have.”

Research It

Once you’ve defined and prioritized “fun,” you’ll need to see if your users feel the same way. The research technique(s) you choose for this depend on your definition and ranking.

Some research options include:

• Surveys: Surveys will give you self-reported informational trends about how people feel. You won’t get a lot of insight into how fun affects user behavior from surveys, but you’ll be able to learn if your users define fun the same way you do. Surveys can also help you quantify and rank user attitudes.
• Interviews: Interviews let you observe users’ reactions as you show them the examples you gathered. You’ll also be able to ask follow-up questions when you need more information. You won’t get statistically relevant results, but you’ll have a chance to see users’ thought processes in addition to understanding their definition of “fun.”
• Observational Studies: If you’ve ranked “fun” as highly important to the site’s success, you may want to conduct observational studies. These let you watch people use the example sites you’ve selected. You’ll be able to see first-hand how users define fun. More importantly, you’ll see how and if fun affects their behavior.

It really doesn’t matter what technique you use as long as you evaluate your definition with the people who will be using the site.

Task It Out

A design itself isn’t fun. It’s how the elements and actions come together within the design that makes it fun. If you think about fun in terms of activities that could enhance your users’ primary goals, you’ll have an easier time designing the flows and processes to fit your definition.

First, come up with a set of actions that imply fun. You’ll want to tailor these to your users and site goals, but here are some good ones to start with:

• Play
• Explore
• Create

Then, figure out ways to incorporate these activities as part of the main user tasks.

Play

Let’s look at two examples from the travel industry: Wanderfly and Orbitz. Wanderfly does a nice job including elements of “play” in its trip-finder design. Instead of standard click-and-select drop-down menus and text entry fields, it invites users to play via selectable buttons and draggable sliders. This makes the travel-planning process easier and more enjoyable.

Fig 1: Wanderfly’s trip finder invites users to play.

Providing opportunities to play increases Wanderfly’s “fun” quotient. What’s important to note here, however, is that Wanderfly uses play to facilitate—as opposed to detract from—the main user goals. That’s pretty hard to do. You’ll need to evaluate, during usability testing, whether your design uses the concept of “play” to make tasks easier and doesn’t take users’ focus away from what they’re trying to do. People will come to your site for a reason; they aren’t looking to just mess around with cool interactions.

Orbitz’s trip finder, while functional, isn’t exactly “fun.” Users can easily make travel arrangements, which is the main site goal, but the site doesn’t go out of its way to make the experience pleasurable.

Fig 2: In contrast, Orbitz doesn’t go out of its way to be playful.

If you’ve identified “fun” as a site goal, see which tasks (if any) would lend themselves to elements of play.

Explore

Discovering and uncovering unexpected functionality as part of a goal can make the overall experience more enjoyable for users. Let’s take a look at some examples from the world of finance.

Reuters invites exploration with its lovely world markets infographic:

Fig 3: Reuters’ world markets data infographic invites exploration.

Reuters uses a map of the world to invite exploration. By placing data geographically on the map, the site lets users achieve their goal—seeing market stats—in a fun and engaging way. The red and green circles show users whether the markets are up or down, and by how much. Rolling over the market name reveals percentage information. Reuters uses exploration and discovery to help users get the information they need in an easy and pleasurable way.

Let’s look at similar data from Bloomberg:

Fig 4: Bloomberg’s world markets data, less exploratory in design.

Nothing’s wrong with Bloomberg’s design, but it’s not especially enjoyable to use. I would argue that the absence of “discovery” here removes a layer of information available on the Reuters’ map. Users can’t as easily visualize the market area they’re looking for.

“Fun” may not seem like an important goal for a finance site, but incorporating elements of play and exploration can make it easier for people to find and understand data.

Create

Allowing users to create something—be it a product, a service, or the site itself—introduces fun into the design. This works especially well on commerce sites, where users are looking to buy a certain product.

Let’s look at sites selling engagement rings. Blue Nile’s interface lets prospective brides and grooms create their own designs.

Fig 5: Blue Nile’s “Build Your Own Ring” interface lets users build and create.

By allowing users to build and create a product, the site adds an element of fun to what can otherwise be an overwhelming shopping experience. Fun in this instance not only helps people accomplish their goals, it also keeps them engaged by “revealing” prices as they move through the creation process.

Contrast that with Kay Jewelers’ engagement-ring commerce design:

Fig 6: Kay Jewelers’ engagement ring display forces users to choose from existing designs.

Kay shows users page after page of row after row of engagement-ring settings. Other than filtering results by price and metal, users can’t really do anything to make the process more personal, inviting, or fun. Even if Kay just added more robust sort or filter functionality, like Tiffany’s does below, it would give a sense of creation and exploration.

Fig 7: Tiffany's engagement ring finder provides additional “creation” options.

Inviting people to use your site to create increases the fun factor and can make it easier for them to complete their main goals.

When designing, see how these activities can compliment the site’s key tasks and goals. If you find incorporating these actions into the interaction design makes it harder for users to accomplish tasks, you’ll want to either select different activities or re-evaluate how you’ve ranked fun in importance to the site’s success.

Test It

So, you’ve defined, ranked, evaluated, and tasked, and you’ve come up with a great design you and your clients agree is fun. How do you know if you’ve succeeded without falling into the “I’ll know it when I see it” trap?

You can evaluate “fun” along with usability during standard task-based testing. But it takes shrewd listening, observing, and questioning skills to do this without leading participants.

Since “fun” is not a behavior, it’s difficult to observe and interpret. You’ll need to lean heavily on the talk-aloud protocol. Listen to the adjectives participants are using as they’re completing the tasks you’ve given them, and watch their facial expressions.

Context is really important here. You don’t want your site to be so much fun that users don’t accomplish their (and your) intended goals. You also don’t want the fun aspects to get in the users’ way. Ask users to complete different, yet similar, tasks multiple times, where they have to use the same mechanisms and see similar design elements. If they seem annoyed or frustrated, chances are the “fun” is holding them back from doing stuff quickly. If they enjoy the process and can complete tasks quickly, the design is probably working for them.

After you’ve finished the task-completion activities, ask follow-up questions about the site as a whole. Listen for “positive” adjectives like fun (obviously), interesting, cool, unexpected, easy, engaging, and simple, and for “negative” or “neutral” ones like boring, fine, as expected, normal, difficult, and annoying. The adjectives won’t tell the whole story, of course, but they will give you insight into how users view the overall design.

It’s also a good idea to post a self-selecting survey when the site launches, and then again 3–6 months later. Include a question about how often respondents use the site on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, depending on site goals. This will give you initial feedback on how users respond to the fun aspects of the site and whether or not they’re still fun after several months of use.

In Conclusion

“Fun” is always going to have an emotional component. No matter how closely you follow the above process, someone is going to disagree—with your definition, ranking, tasks, or design decisions. However, by thinking critically about what it means for a site to be “fun,” and by taking the time to define, evaluate, task and test, you’ll be able to move away from “I’ll know it when I see it” to “I’m confident you’ll design something I think is fun.”

Translations:
Italian

• Illustration by Kevin Cornell