Where’s the ROI?

At what point is it worth it to invest in a new user interface? For Facebook, the answer is “right now.” In the last week, the social network giant rolled out a new design for its homepage, to mixed reviews. The design isn’t bad per se – but the fact that the design was last changed in October (again, with feedback on both ends of the spectrum) makes a lot of people wonder, is it time to optimize again, or is it too much?

Facebook’s new design seems to indicate a stronger desire to push chat and keep users on the site for longer sessions. Unfortunately, the friend requests, messages, and notifications icons get a little lost in this new design—wose considering these are some of the main attractions to repeat visitors. Oddly, updates from the Facebook pages you’re a fan of her even more lost than before — which is a bit strange considering Facebook’s push to businesses.

The news isn’t all bad: the search box now has the spotlight, though the placement might take some a while to get used to. Swapping out the confusing “News Feed” and “Live Feed” options with “Top News” and “Most Recent” is another step in the right direction as well.

Should your business “pull a Facebook” and redesign? There’s a good chance your budget for redesign and optimization isn’t as big as Facebook’s; therefore, you really need to consider how broken the current user interface is before calculating whether or not to redesign. Optimizing navigation and other UI elements is generally a good use of your budget, but there’s definitely a law of diminishing returns that comes into play in this area.

Rob Pegoraro of the Washington Post asked his readers how long this new design will last. Building on that point: do you think this design was worth it? Where does the tradeoff between optimization and consistency of experience reside?

Related articles:

• Facebook’s redesign shows how important search is for social networks (freshnetworks.com)
• Facebook Begins Rolling Out New Home Page Design (Eric Eldon/Inside Facebook) (techmeme.com)
• Facebook Gets Another Facelift (blogs.wsj.com)

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Without clear objectives, you are never going to have clear path towards high ROI. This is especially the case for new technologies such as mobile websites and mobile Web applications: when your VP walks into your office and tells you “we need to do something with mobile”, get them to take a step back and define some objectives first.

If you are thinking of exploring mobile marketing in 2010, you are not alone: a recent survey by R2integrated had 22% of respondents indicate that mobile marketing is “very important” to their 2010 strategy, with 26% ranking it as “important” and 28% ranking as “somewhat important”. Company awareness and lead generation were the top two reasons given for executing a mobile marketing campaign.

All of this is great data but it’s clear that the ROI measurement for a successful local marketing campaign is still not so clear. 43% of respondents in the very same survey indicated that the “most critical area of improvement” for mobile marketing campaign would be how to fully determine the ROI.

What are most mobile marketers doing to establish a positive ROI? Says R2integrated CEO Matt Goddard: “I think because the technology is still working to fully prove itself, most marketers are playing it safe by focusing on the mobile browsing experience, where they can leverage existing Web assets, rather than on mobile marketing, where the ROI proposition is still being evaluated.” Goddard’s views are well-founded: more than half (52%) of respondents said that their mobile marketing campaign would focus on mobile Web site development rather than web applications.

Says Goddard: “The iPhone still reflects the largest base for marketers to sell into, even though the Android may be the platform du jour in terms of hype.” When asked to rate the importance of mobile platforms, 59% of respondents said the iPhone and 40% said the BlackBerry were “very important,” while only 7% thought that Android was a “very important” platform. Indeed, while the user experience is somewhat limited on the Blackberry compared to an iPhone, the huge install base for Blackberry cannot be ignored.

If you are going to jump into the mobile marketing waters for the first time this year, strongly consider launching a mobile presence that can be used across all major mobile devices and operating systems. However you calculate the return on your investment, it definitely helps if you are marketing to all of your customers — and not, say, to only those with an iPhone.

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