After moving to a new apartment in September, I needed to get a new TV. My first instinct was to gather information from a few sources. I browsed online retailers to get an idea of prices, and I looked at manufacturers’ marketing content to understand the latest technologies like 3D TV. After all of that, I turned to consumer reviews and discussions to get a feeling for whether I would actually find those features valuable. (For example, some customer reviews helped me confirm that I didn’t want 3D TV.)

Where did I find those reviews? Everywhere — there are star ratings and comments on product pages at retail sites (like John Lewis and Amazon.com), technology media sites (like CNET) and manufacturer websites. Interestingly — I got the feeling that the manufacturers still aren’t entirely comfortable with the transparency that social media brings. They’d like to put a spin on the message, even if they can’t entirely control it — For example, Panasonic’s UK site has a page that promotes “5 Star Reviews Of The Month” (see the screenshot below). I can't think of a situation when I'd want a firm to guide me only to the most positive reviews of its products. Can you?

Once again, I'm going to write an overview of the European interactive design agency market to help Forrester clients identify design agencies to help them with their projects in Europe. The report title will be "2012: Where To Get Help For Interactive Design Projects In Europe." Participants will receive a copy of the research and their details will be included in the report.

I would like to invite interactive design agencies in Europe to participate. Please complete the agency survey at the following location:

https://forrester.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_3ItaKu2lYfupm3G

The survey is designed to gather data from European firms that have significant experience in designing and developing digital experiences (web, mobile, etc.). Survey questions cover interactive agency size, practice areas, industry expertise, locations, and a range of costs for typical engagements. If you know any agencies that should be included in my report, please forward the survey link to them or show them this blog post.

Thank you!

P.S. If you want a preview of the survey, you can see all the questions on the following site:

https://forrester.qualtrics.com/CP/File.php?F=F_089Q1OJFXDCdXvK

UPDATE (10/May/2012): Survey deadline extension. This survey will be open until 15/May.

 I'm pleased to announce that "The Forrester Wave™: UK Interactive Agencies — Web Design Capabilities, Q1 2010", is now available to Forrester clients on the Forrester Web site.

This report is an evaluation of the Web design capabilities of leading UK design agencies: AKQA, Amaze, Detica, EMC Consulting, LBi, Reading Room, Sapient Interactive, VML London, and Wunderman. Putting this together took six months of effort by a hard-working team that included Harley Manning, Angela Beckers, Richard Gans, William Chu and Shelby Catino.  

In our research, we found that Detica and Sapient Interactive led the pack for transaction-led projects, due in large part to the high usability scores earned by the client reference sites they provided for evaluation. AKQA, EMC Consulting, LBi, Reading Room, and Wunderman were Strong Performers for transaction-led projects, with AKQA's exemplary Brand Image Review scores moving it into the Leaders' circle for image-led projects. Rounding out the field, Amaze showed strength in multilingual projects and image-led projects, while VML London earned top scores from both reference clients for the business results it produced. Both agencies came in as Contenders.

All nine vendors in this report have significant market presence and capabilities to service large clients. They are all ranked in the top 25 UK agencies by fee revenue (using data published by New Media Age).

What sets the Wave apart from other industry rankings and awards is the transparent, fact-based evaluation that underpins it. Forrester clients have the ability to look at detailed vendor scorecards and see what the strengths and weaknesses of each agency are.

To gather information on the strength of each vendor's current offering (represented on the vertical axis) and strategy (represented on the horizontal axis), we used the following methods:

[Posted by Jonathan Browne]

I'm embarrassed to see that we haven't updated our blog in three weeks. I guess it's a time of year when it's hard to stay on top of some things. I found myself exhausted at the end of June. (In addition to my trip to NYC for the CXP forum, I also had to do some business travel in Europe). Perhaps you've been feeling the same way? At the start of July, I took a holiday. It was sorely needed.

I visited Lisbon, which, it turns out, is a very beautiful city with great food and wine. As with all travel, the trip gave me a lot of experiences to think about, including a couple of incidents when I needed to ask people to fix things that had "gone wrong":

[Posted by Jonathan Browne]

I'm noticing more and more "word clouds" in company reports and other business documents:

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