Over 98% of Websites Face Accessibility Issues; Desktop Experience Update Coming: Thursday’s Daily Brief

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Good morning, Marketers, and it’s Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD).

“The purpose of GAAD is to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital access and inclusion, and the more than one billion people with disabilities/impairments,” according to the GAAD website.

Digital accessibility is all about ensuring a web experience that is available to anyone — regardless of their ability level. “Someone with a disability must be able to experience web-based services, content and other digital products with the same successful outcome as those without disabilities,” says the GAAD site.  

If you’re thinking, “Well, anyone can use my website!” You’re probably wrong… Over 98% of websites have at least one accessibility issue, according to data from WebAIM. The biggest offenses include low contrast text and missing ALT text. 

While Google has not made accessibility a ranking factor (boo), it is a critical element of a positive user experience online. Plus, it’s a legal requirement. So if you haven’t made web accessibility a top priority, now’s the perfect time.

Carolyn Lyden,
Director of Search Content

Google page experience update will come to desktop pages

Jeffrey Jose, a Google Product Manager, announced at Google I/O that while the Google page experience update is initially only going to be looking at mobile pages, Google is planning to bring it to desktop pages as well.

This is not launching in mid-June with the page experience update. Google said they will keep us updated on when the desktop version will be live so we can prepare for that update as well. “As always we’ll be providing updated guidance, documentation, and tools,” Jose said.

Why we care. While Barry does not believe this page experience update will be a significant update where you will see tons of sites have drastic rankings changes, those working towards improving their page experience have been primarily focused on their mobile pages. Now that you have your mobile pages ready for this update, you can shift focus towards your desktop pages.

Read more here.

Google testing new RSS options for publishers and bloggers

Some Android users on Chrome Canary will soon see a new option to Follow their favorite bloggers or publishers. The experimental feature is designed to give people the latest content from the sites they follow.

“Our goal for this feature is to allow people to follow the websites they care about, from the large publishers to the small neighborhood blogs, by tapping a Follow button in Chrome. When websites publish content, users can see updates from sites they have followed in a new Following section on the New Tab page,” wrote Janice Wong, Product Manager, Chrome.

Why we care. If you’re a blogger — big or small — or a publisher, make sure your RSS is up to date. Doing so “will ensure Chrome can provide the latest content to users with this experiment.” Google plans to send out more information and guidelines to web publishers as results from the experiment come in. This data will also inform whether the test feature will roll out to a broader audience in Chrome.

Two surefire ways to improve your presentations

Over the years I’ve worked with speakers on countless sessions and webinars and in doing so I’ve observed two mistakes speakers make that, when fixed, can make a big difference in how well the information they have to share is received.

The first mistake is about the presentation topic itself. It needs to be narrowly defined. I can’t emphasize that enough. I think it’s natural to want to fit a ton of information into your presentation, but realistically you can’t teach everything about keywords or link building or any other general topic in 30-45 minutes. You want your viewers to walk away with one or two clear things to do, something they can implement in their own business right away to improve a process or increase ROI. 

How to fix it. Think about your goal for the presentation. What one or two things do you want your viewers to do after they leave your presentation? Once you know, present that information and only that information.

The second mistake is focusing on why the topic of your presentation is important and what viewers should do rather than showing them how to do it. When someone chooses to attend a session or webinar that indicates that they are interested in your topic and think it’s important. Other than a brief opening statement or a statistic to get their attention, there’s no need to go into many details about why people should care about the topic. They already do. That’s why they’re there.

How to fix it. Describing what viewers should do is important but don’t stop there. Telling someone what to do is not as useful as showing them how to do it. So don’t just tell them, provide steps, a process, examples and details on how to do something.

That circles back to the first point, know what one or two things you want your viewers to walk away with knowing how to do, then show them exactly how to do it. Questions or comments? Feel free to reach out to me at [email protected].

How to improve your brand’s Instagram presence

COVID-19 turned 2020 into a year like no other as lockdowns across the globe and social distancing spurred a massive increase in Instagram usage. Mention and Hubspot released their annual Instagram usage report to identify changes in trends and insights for businesses’ to action amidst the current global pandemic.

Some of the top findings from the report indicate that, while big names top the engagement charts, smaller accounts are still seeing steady growth.

• Carousel posts overtook both single image and video posts as the most engaging type of post this year, with 62 likes and 5 comments as the norm.
• The best caption length overall for most engagement in the 1,000-2,000 character range, meaning that championing story-telling can help drive more engagement and display authenticity on posts.
• Beauty and cosmetic industry related accounts received the most engagement.

Here are three tips to improve your brand’s Instagram presence:

1. Complete your brand’s Instagram profile: Make sure there are keywords in your bio and organize your stories into highlights.
2. Be responsive and interact with your community: Reply to followers’ comments and DMs.
3. Post a balance of content types: Diversify your content to include image posts, videos, stories, IGTV, and reels.

Ad retargeting, check if you’re FLoC’d and Google partners with Shopify

What is ad retargeting and how to use it to capture customers? “If [a] potential customer isn’t ready to buy when they first land on your site, then you may be worried you’ll never get them to engage again with your brand. This is where creating a retargeting campaign could work to reengage the customer, reminding them of their initial interest and bringing them back to complete their purchase,” wrote Stephanie Worley for Microsoft Advertising Blog.

Am I FLoC’d? Google is testing FLoC on Chrome users worldwide. Find out if you’re one of them. If you have been assigned a FLoC ID, it means that your browser has processed your browsing history and assigned you to a group of “a few thousand” similar users. Find out if you’ve been FLoC’d.

Google partners with Shopify on online shopping expansion. “Google announced it’s partnering with Shopify, giving the e-commerce platform’s more than 1.7 million merchants the ability to reach consumers through Google Search and its other services,” wrote Sarah Perez for TechCrunch.

The data model behind Notion’s flexibility

Notion.io is taking the world by storm. Almost everyone I’ve spoken to even in the past two weeks has something good to say about it. Notion is a “workspace where you can write, plan, collaborate and get organized – it allows you to take notes, add tasks, manage projects and more,” according to Francesco D’Alessio of Keep Productive.

The beauty of Notion is that it can be anything you want or need it to, really: a to-do list, a notes page, a calendar, a CRM, a syllabus, a directory, etc. (TBH, that’s also the hard part if you’re like me and want to make everything all at once).

How does Notion make it so easy to make anything? Blocks.

“Much like LEGO blocks in a LEGO set, Notion blocks are the singular pieces that represent all units of information inside the Notion editor. The attributes of a block determine how that information is rendered and organized,” wrote Jake Teton-Landis, Engineering at Notion.

And just like LEGOs, the blocks in Notion can be connected to make something bigger than themselves individually (hello, LEGO Death Star). Their explainer deep-dives into how the blocks fit together, transform, form a hierarchy, and more. But what fascinates me most is how the small individual pieces fit together to make pretty much anything your imagination can come up with.