Must Design

Here is how Beyonce Explained her SURPRISE album:

Beyonce called the project a "visual album" and said "I see music."

"It's more than just what I hear," she said. "When I'm connected to something, I immediately see a visual or a series of images that are tied to a feeling or an emotion, a memory from my childhood, thoughts about life, my dreams or my fantasies. And they're all connected to the music."

Internet marketers and web designers should read Beyoncé’s note slowly since the visual marketing tsunami is impacting everything now as Beyonce proved.

How VISUAL is your content? How AWESOME? Up to Beyonce levels? When Beyonce introduced the album on Instragram with a single word image social media all but melted down. Here are stats from Jeff Bullas blog:

The tipping point?

With the evolution of the web there are some events that are small but significant. One of those happened on December 13, 2013. It was when Beyonce launched her latest album with an update on Instagram just captioned as “Surprise”

This broke convention.

Normally millions are spent on traditional media. Lady Gaga hyped her latest album by spending millions on bus advertising, billboards, 2 pop up stores and performed countless interviews. The result. She sold 305,000 copies in 2 weeks.

Beyonce, who has 8 million Instagram followers and over 53 million fans on Facebook decided to go straight to her fans. She decided to give the bus a miss. It was launched directly to iTunes and social media. She invoked the power of  ”World of Mouth”

The results:

* It sold 828,773 copies in 3 days

* Twitter reported 1.2 million Tweets in 12 hours

* It was the largest single week ever in the Apple iTunes store

* It was iTunes fastest selling album worldwide

Product developers, Internet, content and social media marketers need to understand the core TIPPING POINTS in the middle of Beyoncé’s results:

* Marketing is about the SOCIAL/VISUAL now.
* Rework creative if necessary to be more SOCIAL and VISUAL.

* Helps if you look like Beyonce.

* If YOU don't look like Beyonce, FIND SOMETHING that does!
* Weave SOCIAL and VISUAL into product development.

* Think about VISUALS as you go.
* Find visuals that work & double down.

* As for HELP as User Generated Content is GREAT if you don't look like Beyonce (They Might & Even If They Don't They Will Support).

Didn't ASK for a Web 3.0 site (necessarily) from the design and UX team at Atlantic BT, but they built me one anyway. Here are 5 Web 3.0 features they built into http://www.curecancerstarter.org :

* Cloud Content Management via CDN.

* Control to "Users" and math. 
* Control to "Visitors" & MVP. 
* Highly Responsive. 
* Framework to Unique Backends. 

Cloud Based Content Delivery Network
I used to have to worry about image "weight". Now talented programmers can use the cloud and caching to keep page load snappy even as the traditional "weight" of the page is high. Large images with large file sizes can be stored and cached in ways so they look great and don't slow the page presentation.  

Control To Cancer Centers & Algorithms
The IDEA of CureCancerStarter.org is to create a framework with more and more control available for "users", a term I hate but in this case users=cancer research centers. Even things like Hero image management will be managed by the framework code and an algorithm (when we have hundreds of cancer research campaigns on the website). The key is to design with as small a "designer" footprint as possible passing more and more "control" over via the Content Management System (CMS). 

Control to Visitors and MVPs
Visitors will be cancer patients, their friends and families so we created personas for our main groups of donors. Personas help understand the behaviors of any websites archetypes, something very important with donations. We are lacking a few features such as the ability to donate in someone's name and the ability to create tribes (groups and sub-groups), but the framework ASSUMES these features are coming (i.e. Atlantic BT's team coded a flexible framework capable of moving in any number of directions). We got something UP and LIVE (Ries stresses MVPs in The Lean Startup). 

Highly Responsive
We are working to make the framework SWIPE so IOS devices aren't compatible yet, but the site plays like an accordion (moves to meet the device looking at it be it phone, pad or computer). 

4 Unique Backends We Can't See
Perhaps CureCancerStarter.org's most revolutionary idea is to take the Facebook Framework idea and extend it via Authorize.net to an individual backened for each platform user (cancer center). CureCancerStarter.org pipes donations directly into the Authorize.net account of a cancer center. 

We pass the ball over to the cancer centers and so 100% of donations go to them. This pass does mean we are helpless when UNC has trouble setting up their Authorize.net environment (as they are now), but they will work it out with the bank and then the GENIUS of Mark Foulkrod's idea comes to the front - it is possible to divorce merchandising from payment systems with this methodology. 

I want to add commerce features to Scoop.it, Facebook and GPlus, but haven't been able to figure out a seamless way to do so. Once the Authorize.net environment is established it is AGNOSITIC to where transactions come from. This means ecommerce is simply a matter of a link, some graphics and an individual can accomplish the same thing as PayPal (easily transportable shopping cart). 

Explaining that StoryofCancer.org is the Charge To if you are on my Scoop.it may be needed, but the ability to easily add commerce into any corner means the distance between content and conversion just got shorter. 

KUDOS to the programmers and designres at Atlanticbt.com. They rocked this one!
http://www.atlanticbt.com  

Beats By Dre Web Design Lessons
A friend shared the impressive NEWSJACK Dr. Dre and his Internet markeing team pulled off last week. Beats By Dre (http://www.beatsbydre.com ) has some cool web design tricks to steal too such as:

* Consistent images across channels (the Richard Sherman image rode the crest of the wave created by his "controversial" statements after last Sunday's game).
* HUGE RED BUY NOW Call To Action on the home page.
* Hero moves but does so SLOWLY so it isn't jarring.
* They've programmed their Richard Sherman page so his picture matches to every style, something I bet the site does for all celebrity endorsements (cool and NEW).
* Their social buttons are a little low for my taste, but they are well labeled as the "Beats Army" and every major social net is there and they are robust and fresh on all social nets.
* I like how they handle the colors too via the small swatches.

All in all a great ecommerce site in support of one of the best NEWSJACKS I've seen (see my notes on Dr. Dre's multi-channel attack of the web here:   http://sco.lt/8bJiDJ