I’m a fan of analyst firms that market their data through interactive tools. Examples include interactive calculators and animated trending charts embedded into websites. These kinds of web apps can make research data relevant and easy to understand.
Plus, adding an interactive research tool to a web page is about as close to “sticky” and “viral” marketing as most industry analysts can get, short of donning a chicken suit.
Interactive technologies are already finding their way into the research products. You’ve seen them as weighted vendor short listing tables and other decision support tools. By comparison, adding simple interactive web apps to websites and blogs is easy. So, why isn’t everybody all over this as a marketing tactic?
Analysts I’ve spoken with generally share the same 3 challenges:
1. What to aim for (concept)
2. How to build it (design, program, test)
3. Finding time for #1 and #2
A quick way to start tackling the first challenge — concept — is to spend a few minutes reading UIE expert Jared Spool’s post, “Playgrounds for Data: Inspiration from NYTimes.com”. Spool highlights what he likes best about the New York Times’ recent use of web apps. An excerpt:
… represented as a table, this data would have hundreds of rows and dozens of columns. It wouldn’t be interesting and it would be hard to discern interesting patterns.
Yet, as an interactive map, it becomes a different story … Using color, shape, location, and a clever fly-over display, the team has taken a ton of variables and presented them in a more useful format.
It seems likely that interactive web apps also deliver benefits beyond the data presentation itself. What about attracting more inbound links, reader comments, and reader ratings? Improving visitor conversion rates? Or, giving RSS readers a compelling reason to click through to the mothership.
Tags: 
