Its very similar online. Users do not come to a site and immediately complete the intended transaction right away, nor in the same prescribed manner each time. No, upon coming to your site they will interact in the manner they choose, not you. This is engagement. And as trust is built between person and brand, the interest (and hopefully engagement) increases.

I’m working with one of my clients to make a significant shift in their view and measurement of their online audience. Rather than just tracking the progress of a user coming to the site and proceeding through the prescribed checkout process, we are looking at how users choose to engage with their brand. They may look at one or multiple products. They may read more about how its made. They may share that information with others. They might interact with multiple forms of media that further highlight that product and its background. We hope they read customer reviews or even sign up for our email list, but that is really their choice. But in the end, its the user who chooses the path, process and how they eventually get to a point of trust and interest to purchase.

When a digital brand understands how users engage with them, they can learn to better communicate with them. Marketing in the digital space is not about bludgeoning a user over the head to buy, buy buy! Its an opportunity to converse, to dialog, to share, and to engage. And when we learn how users respond to that better, we too can learn how to better converse and engage.

16 months ago, Google bought a wiki company called Jotspot (if you’re unfamiliar with what a wiki is, take a look at this definition). Wikis have been appropriated in a number of ways to date (for instance, Wikipedia). And at a conceptual level, they’ve made a lot of sense – its a central place to consolidate documents and information, and allow multiple people to see it, edit it, and maintain it. There just haven’t been many good platforms for companies to easily take advantage of wikis.

Until now.

Today Google relaunched Jotspot as Google Sites (sites.google.com). Users of Google Apps for your domain are the immediate beneficiaries of Google Sites, and with a few clicks, can set it up as a service for their organization. I’ll be giving a full review of Google Sites once I have a chance to build it out a bit.

But at a fundamental level, Google has created a true collaboration platform. Now, these one-off tools are all part of a larger purpose: to create and share information in a decentralized manner.

Google Sites is intended to allow you to post and share documents, spreadsheets, videos, photos, and general information. It comes with a central file/document repository, and robust permissions and security. And, of course, every part of the wiki is searchable thanks to Google’s search algorithm.

More on this collaboration platform soon, once I can get into it and uncover the details of it. For now though, rest assured it will be easy and intutive, just like everything Google builds.

Mo wrote a post about it on his travel blog…you can read it here. As Mo pointed out, the biggest difference of this site is the “web 2.0 inspired” approach, especially their navigation (which is based on tag clouds). Here’s a screenshot of the main navigation:

This is most interesting to me is that they do not “prescribe” a navigation path for users by determining the site’s architecture and navigation. Rather they rely on what they term as “editor’s picks” (content chosen by VisitFlorida) and what users search for on the website. And although there is general industry concern about the usability of tag clouds with consumers, the folks at VisitFlorida found through user testing that with some label changes and a very effective search interface, they actually respond very well to it.

The site features all of the things that a Web/Travel 2.0 site should have:

• User-submitted photos and videos
• User-submitted trips
• User Reviews
• 10 “Florida Experts” who are contributing content regularly for the website
• Content tagging

Its the content tagging that powers the site search, and ultimately the tag cloud as well. I absolutely love how outright they have been with their use of Web 2.0-based content and tools.

The downside of this site though is the lack of good editorial content and rich imagery. Its almost as though the site relies far too much on user-generated content, and not enough on solid editorial or factual content. Nonetheless, way to go Florida for being daring enough to do this.

Don’t forget to read Mo’s interview with Florida’s CA Clark and his thoughts on the site too.
http://traveltrendreport.blogspot.com/2007/12/case-study-conversation-with.html