Click, enjoy and learn.

We’ve done the hard work for you.

The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM, The New Rules of Relationship Management - The Altimeter Group
“Over the last six months, I’ve been working closely with Ray Wang who is well known in the CRM space as an expert. Coupled with my focus on social technologies we did a deep dive on how our worlds are colliding into the trend to Social CRM. In our opening webinar when we announced our joining of the firm, we made it clear we’re looking at the holistic business, across multiple business departments –not silos or roles.” ~Jeremiah Owyang
Read More

How UX Can Drive Sales in Mobile Apps – UX Magazine
“This is an interview with Jeff Powers and Vikas Reddy, the founders of Occipital and creators of the popular iPhone app, RedLaser. We became interested in their story when we learned the differentiating factor between a somewhat unsuccessful first version and a wildly popular second version was due to their attentition to UX.”
Read More

What Has The Recession Done to Consumers and Us? – Advertising Age
“If we are to get this economy rolling again, start creating jobs, moving products off shelves at fair prices, and buy products and services from other companies such as ad agencies based on their unique offerings versus their discounted fees, then we must do a few things:

* Shift strategies to emphasize differentiated offerings. It’s back to basics folks.
* Spend more time innovating and not figuring out how low you can go.
* Drive efficiencies in your products/services, so the value is better than ever, but don’t lead with price in your marketing strategy, unless you can sustain that strategy. It works for Kia and select discounters — so think hard about the path you are taking you/your clients’ brand.
* Maintain a long-term vision for your brand. Short-term price strategies can quickly erode brand value.”
Read More

Something Different for Click! and for Music – MusicCovery
“Select your music based on mood. An interesting alternative interface to Pandora. Listen off the site or plug it into your iTunes. “On top of the usual features, you will find now optimized ergonomics, a wall of favorite artists, a radio of new releases, more ways to share on Facebook and Twitter.”
Read More

Designing for the Mind - Design Informer
“Is it merely an opinion, or is there something more to it? Breaking design down seems like such an abstract thing. Even the designers who are able to create thought-provoking work seem purely talented and have natural abilities that can’t really be nailed down to a process. But what if there were principles that captured why design and art worked the way that they do?”
Read More 

A comprehensive list of noteworthy news can be found at http://delicous.com/RedDoorInteractive.  Also, be sure to follow us on Twitter if you’d like up to the minute updates on our latest posts http://twitter.com/reddoor.

The Maritime Museum’s research credentials and educational programs are second to none. Nautical books, seafaring music, and fine maritime art can be found in the Museum Store. Local residents and international tourists alike find visiting the museum to be an engaging day of discovery and learning. But the old Web site wasn’t communicating the experience well. This is a place where history and technology still live – not some manufactured presentation asking us to imagine how things once were. We wanted the new site to let visitors feel wind and salt spray. It needed to give a sense of the motion and power inherent in these ships that helped build California and the West.

Our discovery interviews revealed a diverse and growing organization with a broad range of needs. The old site was at least flexible, and was updated frequently by museum staff. There was a huge array of valuable content, but the museum was not being shown to its fullest potential. It was difficult for potential visitors to easily discover the variety of unique experiences available, from classes in celestial navigation to multi-day sailing adventures aboard tall ships. The new site retains the flexibility, while showing the excitement of directly experiencing a variety of historic vessels.

The site has more audiences than just museum visitors. Hundreds of dedicated volunteers and supporters keep the museum afloat. Literally. There are no buildings. The entire museum, even the offices, is aboard its collection of ships. The new Web site had to enable museum staff to communicate with their crews, the media, donors, other maritime museums, and historians. Now it can vividly convey the sense of pride and belonging these volunteers and supporters feel for their museum.

We’re very proud and happy to have been entrusted with this opportunity to help the Maritime Museum of San Diego communicate its world-class status, and we look forward to watching the museum’s continued development and success, supported by the new www.sdmaritime.org site.

Do you crack jokes that include the words “fail whale?” Find yourself spending Sunday nights tweeting away about the latest episode of #trueblood? It might be a bit embarrassing to admit it to your significant other, or explain it to your CEO, but used correctly, Twitter has some pretty serious benefits for businesses and individuals alike.

Twitter is a powerful communications tool that every business can leverage and is becoming a core component of many brand’s overall promotional strategy. Businesses are successfully using twitter to build community, better connect with customers, and participate in brand conversations online. These insights help a smart business glean valuable information to inform future strategy.

We invite you to join us and the San Diego Ad Club on Friday September 25! Our social media strategist Crosby Noricks will teach you how to develop a Twitter-specific social media strategy from concept, to execution to measurement. Learn how companies, including several here in San Diego, are successfully using Twitter to meet their online business objectives.

You will learn:
• Key questions to ask when developing a Twitter strategy
• The different between a Twitter strategy and a Twitter campaign strategy – and why you need both
• Recommended management, monitoring and measurement tools
• How to integrate Twitter into an overall social media or online promotional strategy

When: Friday, September 25, 2009 8:00 AM – 10:00 AM

Where:
Courtyard by Marriott
595 Hotel Circle South
San Diego, California 92108

Presented by: Charles Wiedenhoft – Director of Business Planning & Optimization

DATE: August 25, 2009
TIME: 11:20am PST / 12:20pm MST

REGISTER NOW!!

We’re in the midst of Summer, but online retailers who were able to secure budget for major site enhancements have preparations for the holiday shopping season well underway. Those merchants who are operating under budgeting and staff reductions aren’t as fortunate because cutbacks in consumer spending have put many large-scale projects on hold. Stagnant to moderate revenue growth through the holiday season could be a best case scenario; however, new research indicates that even modest gains are at risk.

A recent PayPal survey revealed that nearly half (45%) of online shoppers abandoned their carts multiple times in the first three weeks of June 2009 due to high shipping costs, security concerns and lack of convenience. Another report by Coremetrics shows shopping cart abandonment hovering at 66% in March 2009 with lower conversion percentages predicted through the remainder of the year. That’s an alarming prospect for retailers hoping to weather another tough holiday season.

This webinar will provide retailers tactics for reducing shopping cart and checkout abandonment with minimal investment in time and resources. We’ll also present recommendations on emerging tactics that should be prioritized for 2010 budget consideration.

Topics will include:

* Shopping cart and checkout abandonment trends
* Top reasons why shoppers don’t convert
* Top methods of reducing shopping cart abandonment
* Influencing conversion before the cart
* Analytics and research methods

REGISTER NOW!!

If you have any questions, please contact Morgan Witt at mwitt@reddoor.biz

Ryan Leslie is a producer, singer, rapper, and multi-instrumentalist who graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Economics and Government at 19 years of age.  Impressive to say the least!  Here is a short video introduction should you not be familiar with his work:

After signing a recording contract with Universal Recordings and never receiving proper marketing support for his music, Leslie decided that he was no longer going to rely on a major label.  In 2005 he launched Ryan Leslie TV, a Youtube channel where he began posting his music videos, behind the scenes footage in the recording studio, and an inside look into his day-to-day adventures as a young record producer.  This was an unprecidented approach to promotion in the music industry at the time.  The Youtube channel in coordination with his Myspace page provided increased exposure for his music and enabled him to cultivate a loyal fan-base.  In 2006, Leslie was accused of artificially inflating his Youtube channel ranking by creating fake accounts.  This lead to a temporary removal of  his channel from the “Most Subscribed” list.  After writing an official statement to the Youtube community channels denying the claim and an official investigation that resulted in no proof of wrongdoing, Leslie’s channel was reinstated.

Ryan Leslie continues to build his brand through social media tools.  His personal website RyanLeslie.com is a fully integrated “content hub.”  There he posts all of his personal thoughts, videos and ways to connect with him directly.  The level of transparency even goes as far as sharing his personal cell phone number and email address.  By opting in to receive communications from Leslie via his virtual Blackberry phone, you can get exclusive invites to shows, hear new music he is working on, and even a personal call from the man himself.  Sound too good to be true?  Check out this experiment he conducted while on a radio promo tour in San Francisco:

His personal Twitter account updates as well as Facebook Connect are integrated into the site so that users don’t have to create an additional user name and password to log on.  This also allows Leslie to attach a real person to comments and reactions.  Each of his posts can generate 150+ comments which goes to show the high level of engagement.

On February 10th Ryan Leslie’s self titled debut album was officially released.  Exactly 7 minutes after making an appearance at the Times Square Virgin Megastore (R.I.P.), the store was sold out of Ryan Leslie albums.  By sticking to a revolutionary idea and the use of  social media tools, Ryan Leslie is “helping to reshape the business paradiam for a dying industry.”  This video speaks for itself:

For a moment, think about the multi-touch screen from the iPhone and the wand movement of the Nintendo Wii. Then, layer on facial recognition technology, electrical activity in the brain, etc. We’ve had the touchpads from laptops and that funny little eraser-head thing in the middle of keyboards for a while. We’ve also had fun with the webcam feature that lets you put animated hats, masks, etc. on people in real-time in video. All of these things are either here or close to here in some way or another and we are on the cusp of all of it coming together whether it be in Windows 7, or otherwise.

Right now in our industry, we depend on a mouse for a lot. We, at times (and should more than we do), make accommodations for ADA compliance, but, for the most part, we rely on a user’s mouse (and only one of the available buttons) to help them navigate what we produce. Our jobs are about to change; usability and creativity is about to jump to a whole new level. Are we ready to make this leap? Are we ready to accomodate for the next generation of navigation? Imagine all the new fun we can have when users are flipping away at our sites and applications as Tom Cruise did in the Minority Report. It’s an interesting time to be us.