We have learned through our work at Consensas that data can profoundly improve livelihoods and reduce conflict. We also believe it can save lives.

As technologists, the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted Canada’s lack of national, standardized, objective health intelligence for citizens and researchers alike.

As Canadian citizens, we recognized that there was a correlation between our mounting uncertainty due to reporting accuracy and the conflicting interpretations of public and undisclosed-public datasets.

In response, the Consensas team launched the COVID-19 Open Data project to improve personal and public decision-making by normalizing all available public health data. The project includes source data from various regional academic or public data initiatives, News, websites, PDFs, office documents, and social media.

Traceability is key. Should information be removed or redacted, Consensas retains attribution for investigation.

The Consensas team adds value by normalizing information and giving it structure. Structured data is more usable for visualization, analysis or secondary machine processing.

To demonstrate how Open Data can be collected and analyzed, Consensas regularly publishes visualizations using Google, open-source data on GitHub, and newsletters (archive).

Open Data initiatives can put knowledge into the hands of the public; more conspiratorial views suggest placation or obfuscation of facts. What we’ve dared to demonstrate is the need for trust. Citizen analysis of (anonymized) COVID-19 intelligence can supplement the resources of public health agencies and governments during an emergency by developing alternative interpretations, diversify analysts, improve emergent pattern recognition, and promote stakeholder engagement to dispel misinformation.

We propose that normalizing data has the potential to make a government’s decisions more democratic and transparent. Improving civic-trust can improve citizen confidence in decisions, increase analytical capabilities, and improve compliance in a crisis. In other words, it could save lives.

The Consensas COVID-19 newsletter

Read the past Consensas COVID-19 newsletters.

Sign up to the Consensas COVID-19 newsletter to gain weekly insights into COVID-19 across Canada.

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The post Can data save lives? A case study on normalizing Canada’s COVID-19 data appeared first on Say Yeah!.

Intent is essential in establishing a connection to explain and persuade towards an exchange between your organization and a consumer, whether on your homepage, an advertising marketing page, or elsewhere on your site.

When we look at a blog and the articles you’re publishing, or other long-form pages or cornerstone content, intent plays into how visitors will react to your CTAs, and how you can best support that person in taking their next step towards making a purchase decision.

One of the challenges businesses faces when investing in publishing longer, information-focused articles or pages on their site is falling into the trap of thinking like a publisher.

A publisher’s job is to grow time on site by offering more engaging content and promoting the consumption of that content, typically encouraging readers to click on an ad or buy a subscription. As a business, your blog is a tool to drive transactions that support your products and services, not your content, and not 3rd-party advertisers.

Learn the best practices that shift a business blog from being content-focused to conversion-focused with this 8 step guide.

In this guide, we highlight ways you can adapt your blog posts and long-form articles to enable those transactions that draw you closer to customers across all stages of their purchase journey. We’ll achieve this by walking through a series of best practices that helped shift one of our customers from a content-focused blog to a service-focused blog, increasing their service engagement, mailing list growth, and deal flow.

Here’s a look at the overall wireframe of a standard article on our client’s blog

The structure of the blog post was designed to facilitate action by consumers.

As a service provider first (not a news publication), it was critical to guide behaviour toward service transactions. As you scroll the page, various paths to services are highlighted through different calls-to-action (CTAs), with no visible promotional marketing content or other article links until the reader has seen all the service options available.

Let’s examine a version of this wireframe that isolates and highlights the CTAs so you can see how they work together as a user scrolls down the page.

From the top of the page down to the links in the footer, we can map the page by intent.

Let’s review the methodology and detail behind each of the CTAs corresponding to the numbers from the wireframe so you can map your pages by consumer intent.

1. 

   The above-the-fold second column to the right of the article is there for visitors who are ready to buy now. The subtle but consistently placed primary CTA allows people who are there to read to focus on the content. Those prepared to shop can also get started, whether it’s their first visit to the site or they’ve been clicking through a series of articles.

2. For users focused on the content, an inline CTA contextualized to the content leads them into the purchase funnel (rather than related content or articles, which move people sideways across the purchase funnel instead of further toward a sale). Remember, you’re a business first; as a primary and secondary objective, help your visitor take the next step, not get lost in more content. Placing other contextualized service links throughout the content encourages people to take their next step towards a purchase as you build trust with the content. Suppose the user continues to be focused on the content. In that case, they can scroll down and read through while secondary CTAs designed to support people with different levels of purchase intent follow along the side:
3. 

   Not ready to buy today? We can share a reminder when it’s time to renew so you can get the best rate.

4. 

   Did you arrive through a search engine to read our great content? You don’t know much about us? Here are all the services we offer to assist with your needs.

5. As the user reaches the end of the article, there’s a prominent CTA widget to entice into the purchase funnel, paired with a renewal reminder link if they’re not ready to shop today. This structure has the added benefit of working great on smartphones, where the second column on the right may be hidden or unavailable. This combined end-of-article get quotes CTA and renewal reminder is another view of the content higher in the side column. It’s not too close to being repetitive and doesn’t take away from the content. Still, it’s there, so these critical CTAs don’t get lost on a smartphone while supporting everyone in taking the next step towards a business goal as they finish reading the article.
6. 

   From there, we get to our third level of intent: someone hesitant to shop immediately or share their details for a renewal reminder but has connected with the content. Did you enjoy this article? Sign up for our newsletter.

7. Not ready to commit to providing any personal information? Here are some other articles you may enjoy. We’ll ensure to use a similar conversion-oriented wireframe structure on each of those as we build trust with you through our premium content.
8. Lastly, we have a rich footer highlighting services and key links that help illustrate the organization’s capabilities, give everyone a jumping-off point to other aspects of the site, and support SEO initiatives by sharing key content categories and cross-linking on every page. In this case, we also highlight contact information and encourage connecting with the organization by phone, email, or social channels. To the user, the company is a customer-first organization ready to help! Another step toward building trust as the consumer weighs their purchase options.

This progressive, methodical, and courteous approach to providing access to services and information supports users at different stages of their purchase journey.

The journey begins with their arrival on the website from a search engine. It extends to the delightful reading experience in your articles, fast and free quote delivery and seamless purchase process. Ensuring to cover all these levels of consumer intent with your wireframes is a sure way to build towards increased conversions and business success.

Our customer’s results

The improved clarity and accessibility of services, content, and actionable next steps improved deal flow across many articles that were well-ranking on search engines but saw limited service engagement.

A before and after comparison

For this customer, the ongoing investment in content began to drive several improved business outcomes. The mailing list grew, the organic search continued to be a key driver of site traffic, site visitors began engaging with various helpful services that were previously siloed away from the content-focused blog pages, and time-on-site shifted from reading to taking action towards business goals.

In part, these improvements helped bolster Kanetix.ca ahead of their 2018 acquisition by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.

The post Designing business blogs around consumer intent, a step-by-step guide appeared first on Say Yeah!.

This is our own project, rather than a client project, but there are some great insights here that we’re excited to share.

First of all, we learned that it isn’t all that daunting to launch a new product into a seemingly saturated market. When you have another take on how to serve the market, provided every touch point tells this story, you can find success.

Kipu is a great example of how the experience of a product isn’t covered by just the design and function of the app itself. We spent a great deal of time considering how we were going to break into an underserved market which had learned to loathe the kind of product we were offering them

.We addressed this across every touch point of the product, from the tone of the content to the style of the app to the marketing material, and certainly how we were going to present and seed ourselves to the market.

The result was thousands of prelaunch email signups and a rabid base of users who couldn’t wait to have the chance to work with Kipu. Yes, the product was carefully designed to serve the market, but it’s not enough to have a great product if you can’t reach an engaged user base.

The post NEW WORK: Kipu, taking the pain out of time tracking. appeared first on Say Yeah!.

Peer review is the cornerstone of scientific research, but it’s not glamorous work. Research to ensure studies are non-biased, valid, and replicable is a vital aspect of scientific research that is often overlooked.

As reported by The Economist:

“Last year researchers at one biotech firm, Amgen, found they could reproduce just six of 53 “landmark” studies in cancer research.”

Curate Science aims to increase exposure for replication studies based off published research, promising to become the go-to source for journalists and researchers alike to find verifiable scientific knowledge.

Our work with Curate Science covers the gamut of discovering scientific research, detailing published findings, methods, and replications, as well as supporting community feedback and verification across the entirety of this trove of scientific knowledge.

The post NEW WORK: Curate Science, the best in peer-reviewed science appeared first on Say Yeah!.

We worked with Unata to help them refine and execute their go-to-market plan, including identity, app, and marketing portal design.

Here’s what Chris Bryson, CEO, has to say about our efforts:

Say Yeah was instrumental in capturing the essence of Unata’s vision, and translating that both into a corporate identity and initial visual concepts that helped us to land our first major client.

Unata is leading the charge in providing personalized experiences to retail customers, and we couldn’t be more excited to share with you the work that launched the company.

Have a look!

We’ll be adding new work on a regular basis over the coming months. If you’d like to be the first to know about these updates, please sign up to our mailing list.

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