Author: Chris Cullmann

Dr. Google and the Modern Physician

Posted on by Chris Cullmann
EP221: How to Get Dr. Google to Actually Help Clinicians and Their Patients, With Chris Cullmann of Guidemark Health

What role does search play in the physician-patient relationship and what can healthcare marketers do to remain relevant in the resulting exchange? I was fortunate to be a guest on the Relentless Health Value Podcast with Stacey Richter and discuss just that topic. During the show we discuss what brands are (and are not doing), how brands can really provide a value to patients and physicians, and who your brand ambassadors are if you’re not participating in the space.

If you aren not already, be sure to subscribe as Stacey Richter has one of the most informed and relevant healthcare podcasts out there.

Listen to my episode: EP221: How to Get Dr. Google to Actually Help Clinicians and Their Patients, With Chris Cullmann of Guidemark Health.

The power of first-person perspective

Posted on by Chris Cullmann
The Power of First Person Perspective

I’ve been a long-time listener, evangelist, and creator of podcasts. Apple spurred the first wave of widespread adoption with the introduction of their Podcast application over 14 years ago. Podcasts where still relatively niche, subject matter not very varied, and it was hard for new audiences to discover new content.

The future of recorded voices

The next wave of change has arrived for podcasts with the streaming audio juggernaut Spotify’s purchasing of podcast network Gimlet and podcast creation application Anchor. Gimlet is the seed of original, high-quality content like Homecoming that can draw audiences toward Spotify. Spotify has also been working with many of the existing podcast networks like TWIT, 5by5, and CNET aggregate content and make it more accessible and discoverable for new audiences.

The impact of easy

The sleeper acquisition for Spotify is Anchor. Anchor had been an independent podcast network that provided an intuitive app and set of production tools that automates the podcast production process through thoughtful prompts, tutorials, and even adding introduction music and credits. This platform is free for users to create short-format podcasts, have them hosted, and distributed by Anchor on their website and network.

One of the many challenges inside of healthcare is helping patients realize their journey. For many patients it can be very difficult to find a voice you can identify with, participate in strengthening their health literacy, and be able to take some enjoyment in that process. It is this gap that podcasts can fill a huge unmet need.

A platform like Anchor has such massive potential to ignite a new generation of patient and caregiver to share their story. What makes this specific window of time so interesting is that the recording process has become increasingly easy: The ability to easily discover this content is as easy as it has ever been (Spotify being only one of many aggregators), voice to text tools allow content to be indexed and discoverable via search engines, and breakaway podcasts have put a spotlight on how great podcast content is.

Hearing a first person perspective, being only one genre of content podcasts can deliver, can telegraph to a patient or caregiver the shared emotion, empathy, and testimony of journey that can change lives. Hearing someone with your own local accent, using terms you may use yourself, and hearing someone talk about their disease can encourage advocacy, and allow patients to have better dialogues with their physicians.

Aligning interests with audiences

Many podcasts and podcast networks are subsidized by advertising. It’s an effective and viable space largely untouched by most healthcare brands. As aggregators like Apple, Spotify, Anchor, SoundCloud, and Stitcher begin to attract content creators, look at the opportunity to market to these audiences: purchase highly targeted ads on networks, work with content creators and networks for pre-roll and mid-roll ad reads, and look to work with content creators themselves to amplify their voice and applaud their efforts.

We are poised at the top of the next “big thing” in user generated content. Where blogs had been 15 years ago with the introduction of moveable type, TypePad, and later WordPress, podcasts are soon to come.

The change is not going to stop at Podcasts. Innovative companies like Anchor are going to share ground with equally ambitious leaders like TikTok and Storyvine.

Marketing Trends for Your Brand Plan 2019

Posted on by Chris Cullmann

 

Content is King and engagement is its throne

Although brand-centric messaging and having content about products easily discoverable is critical to patient, caregiver, and physician engagement, brands need to create content that can add value and be worth their time in consuming. Brands are competing on a playing field where their strength and trust from their audience is typically limited to product specifics and safety information.

Solution: Your brand should be identifying how to add value outside of typical brand safety, efficacy, and dosing information. Think about how to make that information more meaningful, more relevant, and more timely.

Strategy: Create messages and communication that can support product information. Develop content that supports a broader patient and physician journey. Consider behavior-based CRM programs, partner with influencers, and extend communication outside of owned platforms with advocacy and community based interactions.

Digital Disruptors are at the gates and gearing to disrupt

CVS and Amazon are taking action to change the healthcare market in the US. Healthcare is capturing the attention of not just headline-worthy giants, but from every category of investor and entrepreneur. There are many market-factors influencing this growth in interest, but what needs to be clear for brand leadership is that having share of voice is getting tougher and tougher. Issues ranging from patients and caregivers paying out of pocket—and shopping around—to innovation coming from a new breed of fast-moving competitor. The market disruption is here and the disruptors are not playing by the traditional playbook.

Solution: Think differently about your audience and the value your brand is brining to the table: Where can you become a brand that has an bound with your audience? How can you solve problems for them? Think faster and take more risks in communication and channels. Social media was once the “big disruption”, but those taboos are all gone-where can your brand participate that is both true to the character of your product and is also taking advantage of existing audience behavior?

Strategy: Use data and insights to help drive decision making and make calculated changes to your approach. Identify how you will measure success and how you can use these metrics to make your product “disruption-proof”. Be prepared to make more changes: Competitors are not looking for a single-solution move, competition as well as your audience is always moving and evolving, so leverage your analytics and success metrics to help define your roadmap in innovation.

Data is everywhere, but how do we use it?

It seems as though 2017 was the year of big data. As marketers we are awash in data from our sales, market, rep-teams, marketing campaigns, and a myriad of other sources. In what’s feels to many to be choice paralyses, 2018 is going to be the year for brand leadership to refine there data strategies and focus on key sets of data.

Solution: Focus on how data can work for you by focusing on insights. What brand leadership is searching for is not more data, but relevant insights to drive their business—the more proprietary, the better.

Strategy: Work on honing a solution that can address your business questions. Modern data solutions should work in your service carrying the burden of segmentation, market growth, identifying influencers, and specific needs of the modern brand communicator.

Voice interfaces

Amazon Echo, Apple Siri, and Google Assistant are becoming “at the ready” solutions to do everything from managing check-up reminders to answering key healthcare questions. Where does your brand fit into a world where a single search result if read back to a patient asking about their dosing regimen or how physicians are interacting with patient records via voice commands? 2018 is going to see broadening popularity for voice as a platform. Both responsive experiences and intervention support are going to see advances as patients and physicians alike interact with a new generation of popular devices.

Solution: Identify who your audience is and what their likely utility voice interfaces will be. For many consumers, their first engagement has already happened whether oN their phone or via exposure to a connected home device. Providing utility that is valuable and low-friction will yield success. Look for opportunities in your existing patient journey to add whimsy and surprise.

Strategy: Leverage assistant technologies in the home to augment experiences without being intrusive. How can you alert a patient, help with communication with a caregiver, or align physician instructions with at-home behaviors. The ideal space to make use of an assistant is being “just in time” and helpful.

Health video content

Video still represents a huge opportunity for healthcare brands. There are few creating content, and fewer that are true authorities for many brand subject matter. YouTube is still the true leader in this space, but there are many more platforms and solutions in paid, earned, and owned media.

Solution: Create meaningful content that addresses key audience needs. For patients and caregivers, video will be a strong platform to explain clinical information or telegraph empathetic dialogue for patients. For physicians, clearly presented and engaging videos will galvanize relationships with the brand.

Strategy: Create budgets for video programs that address audience needs. Make them accessible and that can help with health literacy for target populations. Don’t over produce videos if the audience needs stackable content “in the moment”. Update videos more frequently and produce them appropriately for specific channels (ie: add subtitles for social video content). By developing a steady cadence of video content, you will have a steady stream of material to amortize and promote in multiple channels. Well titled and tagged do content is still hard-to-come-by online, so these efforts will help boost search strategies and be the foundation for social CRM programs.

Apps are going to have a renaissance

The solve-all “there’s an App for that” heyday is over and what was the reprise of every marketing firm addressing the popularity of the iPhone. Apps are going to make a come-back. Not the promoted single app from the Apple AppStore or Google Play, but via progressive web apps. A new category of application meets mobile (and some desktop) users with extended utility such as alerts, notifications, App-like interfaces, increased speed, and “deep-linking” to create less friction in the user experience.

Solution: Look for opportunities to enhance experiences for mobile users in specific areas of focus: Does your brand have a calculator, frequently accessed listings, a forum module, or telemedicine approach? These solutions, among many others can evolve a user searching for information into a valued engagement by a frequent user.

Strategy: Begin building progressive app solutions for high-value content that can play a frequent role or can be updated remotely on the fly. A platform investment combined with strong content, search strategies, or a CRM program can greatly change physician, caregiver, and patient engagement around key content areas and points of differentiation. Audit your digital content and assess the strategic role of content for your audiences.

The Rise of the CRM Bot

Bots continue to be broadly misunderstood by marketers worldwide. Artificial Intelligence, in its many, many forms is on the tips of everyone’s lips. I believe we are passing into the early days of leveraging bots (and the intelligence that drives them) to address communication needs. The early adopters can quickly take a seat of authority. As healthcare communicators, we will be reflecting on these days the same as we had in optimizing for mobile when smart phones came to maturity.

Solution: Identify where bots can address customer needs and trial a solution: call-centers, customer service interactions, channel monitoring, and even addressing access and clinical issues for patients is an ideal juncture in an audience journey to deploy a bot effectively.

Strategy:  Minimize risk by testing in environments already deficient and without a strong solution. Lengthening customer service windows by immediately addressing a portion of audience questions via text-support or a call center is a great test bed for a program. Identify specific success metrics such as “speed to resolution”, “reduced cost per call” or “higher satisfaction in support” are excellent metrics aligned with the examples here.

Your Healthcare Brand Needs A Chat Strategy

Posted on by Chris Cullmann

In the past year, Facebook has made significant changes to their messenger mobile app. The Facebook Messenger App, “Messenger” to many users, is an mobile application for real-time texting, voice communication, photos, animated, GIFs, audio files. Facebook also provides money transfer for person-to-person funds and also commercial transactions. The app is an impressive effort that consolidates many critical communication vehicles as well as the underpinnings of online shopping.

Facebook was also very savvy with its app strategy and has separated their core social media application from their messaging application. This has afforded them a leaning of their core product application, but also a vehicle that can competently compete with communication incumbents Skype, WeChat, and Line. 

Facebook Messenger follows immediately behind Facebook in device penetration according to a recent pew study. This is fueled by a somewhat controversial decision by Facebook to require mobile users to use the app for messaging. Desktop users can chat through an integrated interface within the browser. Mobile users can initiate chat from a prompt in the Facebook Timeline app or by managing chats in an integrated chat interface.

Messaging Apps Are The New Internet

For healthcare and pharmaceutical brands, the messenger app may seem like a superfluous approach to communication. Facebook’s success with their Messenger service is their bid in what has become a critical and highly competitive market in Messaging Platforms. The messaging market, the most notable success being WeChat, is becoming a subcategory of the Internet. WeChat users, as an example of the category, can communicate with one another, have voice calls, video calls, transfer images, files, create groups and small private and public communities all through mobile and desktop interfaces. WeChat, and the category is evolving beyond the phone number and creating a whole new kind of identifier–for users and marketers.

WeChat has also begun to offer brands with a new platform to engage consumers. IN the case of WeChat, which dominates Asian markets, retailers are providing customer service almost completely through WeChat, many airlines have begun to offer bookings-including transactions-through the secure commerce solutions offered by WeChat, and many private physicians and hospitals are offering booking and consultations via the video conference features.

While the US shows a very mild interest in WeChat, Line, and other services that are incredibly popular worldwide, Facebook sees the massive opportunity that messaging platforms can offer both the consumer and marketer. Modeling their service on best-in-class apps like WeChat Facebook can provide a competitive “me-too” solution to a largely untouched market in the US.

What is your “Messaging Strategy”?

For healthcare brands Facebook has proven to be a turbulent partner. There are many success stories for healthcare and pharmaceutical brands on Facebook. I continue to be a proponent for these apps to provide value and authentic engagement with patients. For brands that are as enthusiastic as I am towards Facebook, it offers a secure channel for dialogue and an new channel for CRM that is platform agnostic and not reliant on phone numbers for verification.

WeChat Will-Can-Might Replace Your Website

Posted on by Chris Cullmann

WeChat is huge. You may have never heard of it and if you have you may not understand just how huge it really is. 11 Billion registered accounts. 650 million active users. 44 minutes a day on average is spent in this single app.

What is WeChat? WeChat is a text and voice based messaging system that can support “touch to talk” technology, conference calls, local networking, photos. It is a bit of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram rolled into one app and a massive, multi-country social network.

Successful from its introduction to the market in 2010 as a way to provide low cost messaging for mobile phone users in asian countries, WeChat and its parent company Tencent have been making improvements and evolving it every since. It natively supports every major platform and continues to add features to support both personal and business to business communications.

Why is WeChat so important? WeChat is a category leader for a new type of communication paradigm. WeChat is acting as a walled-garden ecosystem. Users can talk, chat, search, engage with brands, conduct business transactions, even play games without leaving the app itself. This is a huge change. WeChat’s massive success in China, a focal market for America’s tech brands, has every player considering counter strategies.

Google is rumored to be working on a new chat application that provides plain-language search responses through artificial intelligence (a chatbot for it’s own services, like Android), Facebook has been experimenting with “M”, Apple continues to push Siri to serve a broader role on iOS devices with more capabilities and access to more apps. The value of these eco-systems is going to be the platform war for the next 5-10 years.

For brands, this is going to be a massive strategy shift. Digital Strategist today are moving their clients towards social media and channel where customers are already active and consuming content. To participate in an ecosystem like WeChat, brands have to completely rethink marketing strategies. Not only will each “service” bring its own protocols, cultures, and formats, but managing acquisition and retention programs will require a reboot.

For many American companies, WeChat sounds like an unlikely departure from current marketing and platform strategies. And with the relatively few number of Americans using WeChat, I understand any apprehension. I think if we take that same position and consider that more than 64% of Americans are on Facebook and are spending upwards of 40 minutes per day on the social network, Facebook’s own “walled garden” approach to user management lends itself to a native business strategy for anyone trying to engage customers on social media.

Chat applications, such as Facebook’s are becoming an overriding value proposition to end users of social networks. Facebook’s own messenger application is beginning to cannibalize the brand’s core application for younger Americans. Considering that none of these eco-systems co-operate with one another and are based on competing standards, additional utilities such as support for commerce, voice-support, and additional features will put them on a road to mirror WeChat very quickly. Brands: take notice.

So should brands retire their websites and create WeChat channels and Facebook pages? No. What brands should do is begin to experiment with native engagement with their audience. Even for the healthcare brands that I regularly work with: begin to build customer service support for Facebook, Twitter, and other channels where your audiences are active. If you are a global brand, you should definitely be working on developing a solution to support customers on WeChat, Line, and WhatsApp. Begin to develop intelligence on where your audience is active and what the culture of these channels are.

Professional Social Networks For Healthcare

Posted on by Chris Cullmann

The ecosystem of social networks for healthcare professionals is incredibly diverse. For the massive number of physicians in the United States, there is no epicenter for online dialogue like Facebook, nor anything with the meteoric promise of SnapChat or Instagram. The industry is quickly maturing and a highly specialized web of social media destinations, groups, aggregators, and content providers are readying new channels to serve physicians, nurses, pharmacists, residents, and students.

For savvy agencies and brands that plan to engage with physicians and healthcare professionals this presents an opportunity to hone channel mixes create programs specifically targeted for their specialists and audiences.

Although it is easy to fall into a trap asking “why do we believe there are any differences in the way that healthcare professionals use social media for their work as does anyone else”, it is important to remember that in the US, HIPAA and privacy issues remain a challenge for healthcare professionals. A study from the US National Library of Medicine1 shows that although 90% of surveyed physicians use social media for personal use, 65% are engaged in social media for “professional reasons”. This survey also points to steady growth in both personal and professional adoption of social media in their responders. It is this gap that leaves a chance for both dedicated physician, healthcare professional, and specialist communities to provide a venue for exchanges and peer-to-peer engagement.

The highly fragmented environment is what agencies and brand leadership need to be cognizant of to build relationships. Before engaging with a single physician, there needs to be a consideration: What do I have permission from this group or community to discuss? What do I have the authority to discuss?  With the answer to both of these questions, you can have a meaningful relationship with any community.

The first: What do I have the permission to discuss is relating to boundaries. Whether this is a massive primary care community or a niche group, knowing the dialogue, tone, and role that you have is critical to knowing if you will be welcomed. Many brands, professional communication or otherwise, make the mistake of applying a foreign culture to an already active community and become shunned. It is also critical to understand if you will be an outsider welcomed in as a guest or a bonafide member of the community.

The second: authority. This is a close second to permission and related. For many drug manufacturers, brand leadership, or agencies, this is simple: The product. Be sure that you are not introducing a powder keg topic or opinion that will polarize the community or have members question your purpose in being present. It is also critical to tie your authority to your intended outcome (this last point is a lynch-pin concept for Content Strategist).

Consider the healthcare professional, specialist, or nurse that you are trying to reach—do you know where they are online, the sources they visit and trust? How can you augment their search for information and provide value to their day? Answering that question and doing so aware of the tapestry of media and personalities they are going to come across can help find new and committed pundits for your brand.

Building A Better Message For Patients and Physicians

Posted on by Chris Cullmann

The following post and linked full article is co-authored with David Davenport-Firth, Executive VP, Health Behaviour Strategy & Intervention, Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide

The model for marketing healthcare brands is changing. There are many voices for health, pharmaceutical, and “wellness” products. When we are creating materials for a brand, we should look at the users for who they are: people who are motived by their own needs, interests, desires, and constraints. They have infinite choices and a myriad of sources for information on pharmaceutical products and can chose from as many types of narratives, stories, and styles of storytelling.

Do you know who maintains the authority position online or off for your brand or condition? Equally as important: who commands the largest share of voice? Pharmaceutical brands need to use their expertise and research to be THE canonical resource for their product when physicians, patients, and caregivers want to really understand a therapy. This is why creating for behavior change is so critical in a competitive market.

Marketers have to move quickly to surface on their users’ radar. Patients, caregivers, and even healthcare professionals have little opportunity to read every article to compare all sources to determine the most authoritative website or author. They are typically motivated through a discovery process that is difficult to navigate and often fraught with difficult literature and conflicting opinion. This motivation is typically one driver of many. Pharmaceutical and healthcare brands need to be consistent and persistent to reach audiences.

Message and Volume

The modern patient, caregiver, and physician all have access to a limitless well of information. The availability of information creates a massive challenge for both user and content creator. For many users, what they are drawn to is the content that they find “favorable.” The information that is accessible, visual, easily discoverable, and even appearing first in search engines may not be the best information. This is the challenge, and opportunity, for the modern healthcare communicator.

Read the full article on PharmaVOICE

Google Changes Search Ad Format For Pharma Brands

Posted on by Chris Cullmann

Google has announced that they will be updating the Google Search Ad format it offers to healthcare and pharmaceutical brands. This change affects support for pharmaceutical brands with a “black box” warning or those that require adverse event information as part of the ad.

URL architecture for black box brands

As of July 20, 2015, Google will be moving to a common AdWords format that no longer supports an additional line of copy and additional URL for black box brands and those requiring adverse event language. This is an evolution that is optimized for its paid search marketing solution that has been available to pharmaceutical advertisers for the last five years.

An example of how a brand might be using search engine marketing in Google AdWords before and after the July 20th update:

Pre-July 20th AdWords Example:

Post-July 20th AdWords Example:

What does this change mean for pharma brands

Brands that are currently using Google AdWords for marketing will need to consider a rewrite of existing creative and landing pages. The pages that the new AdWords Ad link to will need to prominently feature adverse events information for the product. This will require revisiting of search marketing strategies as well as potential user experience and design changes to optimize inbound traffic from paid search campaigns.

Brands currently using paid search programs with Google should leverage Google’s Sitelinks feature that provide several links to content within a product website within the AdWords format. Product managers and agencies should also reinvest in paid mobile search with this change as there is a broader efficiency with this change in having a single ad format for all platforms (desktop and mobile search).

Post-July 20th AdWords Example with Sitelinks:

The changes to Google’s Ad program will have a significant impact on pharma brand website marketing performance as well as the cost of paid search solutions currently used for search engine marketing programs. Expect to see changes in your category as well as behavioral changes for your paid and organic search performance.

Don’t panic

The changes to Google’s AdWords program will affect everyone using paid search for healthcare professional and consumer engagement. Digital media is constantly evolving. Strategist and communication professionals will continue to plan and create strategies to evolve with it.

The Conversation Of Search

Posted on by Chris Cullmann

Search engine marketing is a foundational element of digital advertising and branding. 133.7 Million people in the US carry search tools with us everywhere we go: Smartphones, tablets, connected computers. But the context and method of those searches are all very different. This is true from a user’s expectation as it is from the search results themselves. The complexity of search goes beyond a search engine’s algorithm. Search, in it’s most recent form, is influenced by your location, social network, the speed of your connection, and your personal search history.

Google Voice Search: The Future of SEO

Enter Voice Search

Although Google has had voice search enabled for the Chrome browser and Android devices for almost a year now, recent updates in the wake of this Google I/O conference enables voice search for a wide variety of devices with a microphone and speakers. Desktops, laptops, tablets, mobile phones, and a various mobile devices will now support auditory prompts to begin searches and respond with a results page as well as a spoken response in a synthesized female voice.

Google’s voice search is a significant change in user experience and will act to unify Google’s search strategies. While circumstance, device type, and input method will change the specifics of search, a user’s spoken search queries will be more consistent between devices. Users are not going to be changing the cadence or style of speech based on what kind of device they are speaking to. This nuance will help consolidate a search offering that is customized to a user’s desired results rather than influenced by the size of the device, keyboard, or touch-screen from which the search is beginning from.

A search started by voice is very different from what a user may type in. Although true voice recognition is in it’s infancy, voice products like Siri have shown the wider public that voice input is a great utility. The voice search experiences are also allowing users to become more comfortable with using natural voice cadence for commands and queries. For those of us who are already using voice search, it is becoming increasingly more natural to initiate searches with a single tap and talk action. Mobile devices make this even more natural by virtue of having the devices already in-hand.

The Conversation Of Search

Hot Words are a new feature for Google search that had been introduced as part of the Google Glass project. Hot Words are cues that make sure the computer is listening and will prompt a search. For the moment “Ok Google” is a command that, when followed by any spoken words, will prompt a search. This shift will change search for everyone. Such a command enables near instant access to information regardless of where a user, what they are doing, or even if they have a free hand.

The power of Hot Words is not only in it’s accessibility, but in the habit of access it will form. Conditioning users to search Google (or Bing for that matter) as simply as asking a question and having results read back will change the way we interact with the web and data. One key change is that the results that are read back by Google are a single curated post, typically Wikipedia. Your prized page ranking is now further complicated by search results being read back to the user on load.

The interface (and lack thereof) of voice search is one vector of change. The results–and how we engage with the results–is completely different. For mobile devices and tablets, those results read back, and how search engines like Google and Bing curate those results, will make or break the utility for users. For search engines, this will require a much more accurate interpretation of semantic langauge and implication than the way most users search today. Currently, many users compound keywords, or use know strings together

How Do Brands Take Advantage Of Voice Search?

My professional focus is in healthcare communication and Google search is a small part of a larger shift to making content for users (patients, healthcare professionals) more relevant and more accessible. There is a strategy to provide content in a format, phrasing, or taxonomy that is similar to how an audience will be searching for it. There is another strategy, a more difficult one, that creates a vernacular or phrasing synonymous with your brand that your audience can search specifically for to reach a site or digital property.

Google’s use of language to prompt search makes those search even more colloquial. In addition to a tendency for slang, there is also a need to develop content that will show up high in results for basic questions or difficult to pronounce words and terms. Google will share some of the burden in aligning audiences with quality content, but it is the marketer that will need to keep an eye on fast evolving technology and adjust strategies and tactics accordingly.

Related posts

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SVG For Web Designers & Developers

Posted on by Chris Cullmann

It’s time for designers and developers to adopt Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) for websites and digital projects! Images have been part of the web from very early in it’s development. The inclusion of visuals helped fuel its growth and recently become a focal point for the most popular services on the web. Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Vine, Flickr, the list of website that focus on our visual lives continues to grow. That growth is accompanied be a need for faster computers, increased bandwidth, and larger displays to consume our digital lives. Even entry-level phones provide resolutions that rival those used when the internet’s popularity entered most people’s homes.

SVG for web designers and developers

What is SVG?

Scalable Vector Graphics or SVG is a format for digital graphics that allows images to be rendered using XML as opposed to bitmap data. This has several advantages over pixel data and formats like GIF, JPG, or PNG: lessened file weight, it’s parsable and searchable, and, most importantly, the files can be scaled without a loss in quality.

Many designers and developers are already using vector data on the web without hesitation as Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files. Although PDFs require a plug-in to work, there is increasing support built into browsers. Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox both support PDFs natively in recent releases. The same advantage of highly detailed  and lightweight files are available even more widely in the form of SVG images and graphics.

Vector graphics are nothing new to visual artists. The format has been around for many years, originally supported by PostScript at the dawn of desktop publishing. Among it’s most notable advantages is its ability to scale without any degradation is quality. It does so by rendering points and lines from mathematical data. It’s lightweight and efficient. It lacks some of the subtle details to capture photography, but is ideal for many styles of graphics and illustrations.

A barrier to vector graphic’s adoption for viewing on the web was wide support from browser manufacturers. For many years, Adobe Flash Player provided ubiquitous support for vector art, but it was largely used for animation and as a video player. With the wide adoption of tablets and smartphones, Flash has lost some of it’s luster as a vehicle for vector graphics with designers and developers.

The Problem SVG Solves

What should drive designers and developers to SVG is the need for graphics that are scalable and responsive to support the vast variety of devices we consume the web from. Many designers have already taken to the trend of responsive web design to answer a growing mobile market and avoid creating multiple websites. Doing so requires creating multiple images for the variety of screens and resolutions. Even those designers who create dedicated mobile and desktop experiences still require a library of images in multiple resolutions for various clients. A single SVG can be used at multiple sizes from a single hosted file.

Those mobile users will also benefit from SVG’s compact size. Being able to deploy images that can be full-screen and larger over cellular networks mean not having to compromise on aesthetics when creating designs and interfaces.

SVG images are also an ideal response to new ultra high-resolution displays being sold with new tablets and laptops from Apple, Microsoft, Asus, and several other manufacturers. These displays simply scale images that are not large enough to populate the screens resulting in blurry or lackluster experiences. Vector images, being resolution agnostic, look perfect regardless of the display’s resolution or technology.

SVG Has Some Challenges

Although SVG has the genetics for an ideal image format, it does have several challenges that may impede wildfire-like adoption. The biggest barrier for SVG is legacy support. Although open source browsers like Firefox and Chrome and mobile browser for iOS and Android have supported SVG since their early builds, Microsoft has been slow to adopt the format. Internet Explorer 9, with wide support for HTML5, is the first IE release to provide rendering for SVG. There is a work around available that substitutes bitmap images for those older browsers-making it ideal for those who need to support older operating systems or minimum business requirements for client work.

For artists used to working with vector images, one of the side-effects from working outside of the constraints of bitmap art is the loss of pixel-perfect image management. Because vector art uses math to render art “at runtime” for each presentation, every computer renders the lines slightly different based on how big it is drawn, how it is scaled, etc. This is most evident in fine-line work and how the computer will “alias” high-contrast edges. I believe the benefits far outweigh this small drawback, but it is an important component in the exchange for a lightweight illustrative file format.

SVG image comparison against JPG with high quality compression

SVG files are often noted for the performance they provide for the size and impact. Because this file format uses plotted points to render the artwork and that work is done real-time by the viewer’s computer, there is a point at which the art’s complexity may have a pixel image be the better solution. These situations are not typical and I would put a well prepared SVG file against the same image as pixel data any day.

Like any other decision for a website’s design and coding, there are many different ways to the same or similar outcome. The solutions are as varied as there are ways to experience them. SVG images are simply another tool in the designer and developer toolkit and one that is more widely supported than ever before.

Making a change like this is a barrier for web developers. It introduces questions about compatibility, work-flow, consistency of quality. A web designer or developer is likely to ask themselves what advantages they hope to achieve as a result of using SVG. The response (and decision to move forward), should be informed by the type of content you create.

I work for a healthcare communications agency. Much of the visual content we plan for and build contains charts, graphs, and infographics. This style of imagery, usually originating as vector artwork is an ideal candidate to deploy as SVG. I say so not only because the line art and graphic style will be more crisp and allow for indexed files, but because the power of SVG images is the ability to provide much greater detail to otherwise illegible graphics.

More efficiency can be gained from an SVG workflow can be gained by using various javascript libraries and extensions to allow for zooming in, and expanding images to reveal small print, additional details, or provide enhanced views. For many agencies and content creators this provides a great advantage with less files to manage and a much more responsive user experience.

Bringing SVG To Your Next (Or Current) Project

Obviously, I am a proponent of scalable vectors. I believe they provide a better solutions many graphics online (or any digital project) and also answer a need within the responsive web design workflow. If you are not familar with vector images, you should be aware that SVGs are not a solve-all solution. One disadvantage to the SVG format is that you are storing all of the various points you’ve used to draw an image. If you have a particularly complicated images, the size of the file is going to grow as well. For some very complex image with many lines and points, it may be much more efficient to convert that image into a bitmap for digital sharing and viewing. When in doubt, test and then test again.

There is little reason to delay in adoption of SVG for your web design projects. The support is in place and from almost every major platform-from mobile to desktop to televisions. If you still have questions, post a comment or visit some of the references I’ve included below.

References:

http://caniuse.com/#feat=svg
http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2012/01/16/resolution-independence-with-svg/
http://dbushell.com/2012/04/03/svg-use-it-already/
http://alistapart.com/article/using-svg-for-flexible-scalable-and-fun-backgrounds-part-i
http://alistapart.com/article/using-svg-for-flexible-scalable-and-fun-backgrounds-part-ii
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Vector_Graphics

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