The tech industry has never been accused of moving slowly. The exponential explosion of AI tools in 2024, though, sets a new standard for fast-moving. The past few months of 2024 rewrote what happened in the past few years. If you have not been actively paying attention to AI, now is the time to start.

I have been intently watching the AI space for over a year. I started from a place of great skepticism, not willing to internalize the hype until I could see real results. I can now say with confidence that when applied to the correct problem with the right expectations, AI can make significant advancements possible no matter the industry.

In 2024, not only did the large language models get more powerful and extensible, but the tools are being created to solve real business problems. Because of this, skepticism about AI has shifted to cautious optimism. Spurred by the Fortune 500’s investments and early impacts, companies of every shape and size are starting to harness the power of AI for efficiency and productivity gains.

Let’s review what happened in Quarter Four of 2024 as a microcosm of the year in AI.

New Foundational Models in the AI Space

A foundational large language model (LLM) is one which other AI tools can be built from. The major foundational LLMs have been Chat GPT, Claude, Llama, and Gemini, operated by OpenAI & Microsoft, Anthropic, Meta, and Google respectively.

In 2024, additional key players entered the space to create their own foundational models. 

Amazon

Amazon has been pumping investments into Anthropic as their operations are huge consumers of AI to drive efficiency. With their own internal foundational LLM, they could remove the need to share their operational data with an external party. Further, like they did with their AWS business, they can monetize their own AI services with their own models. Amazon Nova was launched in early December.

xAI

In May of 2024, X secured funding to start to create and train its own foundational models. Founder Elon Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI. The company announced they would build the world’s largest supercomputer in June and it was operational by December.

Nvidia

In October, AI chip-maker Nvidia announced it own LLM named Nemotron to compete directly with OpenAI and Google — organizations that rely on its chips to train and power their own LLMs. 

Rumors of more to come

Apple Intelligence launched slowly in 2024 and uses OpenAI’s models. Industry insiders think it is natural to expect Apple to create its own LLM and position it as a privacy-first, on-device service. 

Foundational Model Advancements

While some companies are starting to create their own models, the major players have released advanced tools that can use a range of inputs to create a multitude of outputs: 

Multimodal Processing

AI models can now process and understand multiple types of data together, such as images, text, and audio. This allows for more complex interactions with AI tools. 

Google’s NotebookLM was a big hit this year for its ability to use a range of data as sources, from Google Docs to PDFs to web links for text, audio, and video. The tool essentially allows the creation of small, custom RAG databases to query and chat with.

Advanced Reasoning

OpenAI’s 01 reasoning model (pronounced “Oh One”) uses step-by-step “Chain of Thought” to solve complex problems, including math, coding, and scientific tasks. This has led to AI tools that can draw conclusions, make inferences, and form judgments based on information, logic, and experience. The queries take longer but are more accurate and provide more depth.

Google’s Deep Research is a similar product that was released to Gemini users in December.

Enhanced Voice Interaction

More and more AI tools can engage in natural and context-aware voice interactions — think Siri, but way more useful. This includes handling complex queries, understanding different tones and styles, and even mimicking personalities such as Santa Claus.

Vision Capabilities

AI can now “see” and interpret the world through cameras and visual data. This includes the ability to analyze images, identify objects, and understand visual information in real-time. Examples include Meta’s DINOv2, OpenAI’s GPT-4o, and Google’s PaliGemma. 

AI can also interact with screen displays on devices, allowing for a new level of awareness of sensory input. OpenAI’s desktop app for Mac and Windows is contextually aware of what apps are available and in focus. Microsoft’s Co-pilot Vision integrates with the Edge browser to analyze web pages as users browse. Google’s Project Mariner prototype allows Gemini to understand screen context and interact with applications.

While still early and fraught with security and privacy implications, the technology will lead to more advancements for “Agentic AI” which will continue to grow in 2025.

Agentic Capabilities

AI models are moving towards the ability to take actions on behalf of users. No longer confined to chat interfaces alone, these new “Agents” will perform tasks autonomously once trained and set in motion.

Note: Enterprise leader SalesForce launched AgentForce in September 2024. Despite the name, these are not autonomous Agents in the same sense. Custom agents must be trained by humans, given instructions, parameters, prompts, and success criteria. Right now, these agents are more like interns that need management and feedback.

Specialization

2024 also saw an increase in models designed for specific domains and tasks. With reinforcement fine-tuning, companies are creating tools for legal, healthcare, finance, stocks, and sports. 

Examples include Sierra, who offers a specifically trained customer service platform, and LinkedIn agents as hiring assistants.

What this all means for 2025

It’s clear that AI models and tools will continue to advance, and businesses that embrace AI will be in a better position to thrive. To be successful, businesses need an experimental mindset of continuous learning and adaptation: 

While the models will continue to get better into 2025, don’t wait to explore AI Even if the existing models never improve, they are powerful enough to drive significant gains in business. Now is the time to implement AI in your business. Choose a model that makes sense and is low-friction — if you are an organization that uses Microsoft products, start with a trial of AI add-ons for office tools, for example. Start accumulating experience with the tools at hand, and then expand to include multiple models to evaluate more complex AI options that may have greater business impact. It almost doesn’t matter which you choose, as long as you get started.

Oomph has started to experiment with AI ourselves and Drupal has exciting announcements about integrating AI tools into the authoring experience. If you would like more information, please reach out for a chat.

The U.S. is one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world. While English may be our official language, the number of people who speak a language other than English at home has actually tripled over the past three decades. 

Statistically speaking, the people you serve are probably among them. 

You might even know they are. Maybe you’ve noticed an uptick in inquiries from non-English speaking people or tracked demographic changes in your analytics. Either way, chances are good that organizations of all kinds will see more, not less, need for translation — especially those in highly regulated and far-reaching industries, like higher education and healthcare.

So, what do you do when translation becomes a top priority for your organization? Here, we explain how to get started.

3 Solutions for Translating Your Website

Many organizations have an a-ha moment when it comes to translations. For our client Lifespan, that moment came during its rebrand to Brown Health University and a growing audience of non-English speaking people. For another client, Visit California, that moment came when developing their marketing strategies for key global audiences. 

Or maybe you’re more like Leica Geosystems, a longtime Oomph client that prioritized translation from the start but needed the right technology to support it. 

Whenever the time comes, you have three main options: 

Manual translation and publishing

When most people think of translating, manual translation comes to mind. In this scenario, someone on your team or someone you hire translates content by hand and uploads the translation as a separate page to the content management system (CMS).

Translating manually will offer you higher quality and more direct control over the content. You’ll also be able to optimize translations for SEO; manual translation is one of the best ways to ensure the right pages are indexed and findable in every language you offer them. Manual translation also has fewer ongoing technical fees and long-term maintenance attached, especially if you use a CMS like Drupal which supports translations by default.

“Drupal comes multi-lingual out of the box, so it’s very easy for editors to publish translations of their site and metadata,” Oomph Senior UX Engineer Kyle Davis says. “Other platforms aren’t going to be as good at that.” 

While manual translation may sound like a winning formula, it can also come at a high cost, pushing it out of reach for smaller organizations or those who can’t allocate a large portion of their budget to translate their website and other materials. 

Integration with a real-time API

Ever seen a website with clickable international flags near the top of the page? That’s a translation API. These machine translation tools can translate content in the blink of an eye, helping users of many different languages access your site in their chosen language. 

“This is different than manual translation, because you aren’t optimizing your content in any way,” Oomph Senior UX Engineer John Cionci says. “You’re simply putting a widget on your page.” 

Despite their plug-and-play reputation, machine translation APIs can actually be fairly curated. Customization and localization options allow you to override certain phrases to make your translations appropriate for a native speaker. This functionality would serve you well if, like Visit California, you have a team to ensure the translation is just right. 

Though APIs are efficient, they also do not take SEO or user experience into account. You’re getting a direct real-time translation of your content, nothing more and nothing less. This might be enough if all you need is a default version of a page in a language other than English; by translating that page, you’re already making it more accessible. 

However, this won’t always cut it if your goal is to create more immersive, branded experiences — experiences your non-English-speaking audience deserves. Some translation API solutions also aren’t as easy to install and configure as they used to be. While the overall cost may be less than manual translation, you’ll also have an upfront development investment and ongoing maintenance to consider. 

Use Case: Visit California

Manual translation doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Visit California has international marketing teams in key markets skilled in their target audiences’ primary languages, enabling them to blend manual and machine translation. 

We worked with Visit California to implement machine translation (think Google Translate) to do the heavy lifting. After a translation is complete, their team comes in to verify that all translated content is accurate and represents their brand. Leveraging the glossary overrides feature of Google Cloud Translate V3, they can tailor the translations to their communication objectives for each region. In addition, their Drupal CMS still allows them to publish manual translations when needed. This hybrid approach has proven to be very effective.

Third-party translation services

The adage “You get what you pay for” rings true for translation services. While third-party translation services cost more than APIs, they also come with higher quality — an investment that can be well worth it for organizations with large non-English-speaking audiences.

Most translation services will provide you with custom code, cutting down on implementation time. While you’ll have little to no technical debt, you will have to keep on top of recurring subscription fees.

What does that get you? If you use a proxy-based solution like MotionPoint, you can expect to have content pulled from your live site, then freshly translated and populated on a unique domain. 

“Because you can serve up content in different languages with unique domains, you get multilingual results indexed on Google and can be discovered,” Oomph Senior Digital Project Manager Julie Elman says. 

Solutions like Ray Enterprise Translation, on the other hand, combine an API with human translation, making it easier to manage, override, moderate, and store translations all within your CMS. 

Use Case: Leica Geosystems

Leica’s Drupal e-commerce store is active in multiple countries and languages, making it difficult to manage ever-changing products, content, and prices. Oomph helped Leica migrate to a single-site model during their migration from Drupal 7 to 8 back in 2019. 

“Oomph has been integral in providing a translation solution that can accommodate content generation in all languages available on our website,” says Jeannie Records Boyle, Leica’s e-Commerce Translation Manager. 

This meant all content had one place to live and could be translated into all supported languages using the Ray Enterprise Translation integration (formerly Lingotek). Authors could then choose which countries the content should be available in, making it easier to author engaging and accurate content that resonates around the world.  

“Whether we spin up a new blog or product page in English or Japanese, for example, we can then translate it to the many other languages we offer, including German, Spanish, Norwegian Bokmål, Dutch, Brazil Portuguese, Italian, and French,” Records Boyle says.

Taking a Strategic Approach to Translation

Translation can be as simple as the click of a button. However, effective translation that supports your business goals is more complex. It requires that you understand who your target audiences are, the languages they speak, and how to structure that content in relation to the English content you already have. 

The other truth about translation is that there is no one-size-fits-all option. The “right” solution depends on your budget, in-house skills, CMS, and myriad other factors — all of which can be tricky to weigh. 

Here at Oomph, we’ve helped many clients make their way through website translation projects big and small. We’re all about facilitating translations that work for your organization, your content admins, and your audience — because we believe in making the Web as accessible as possible for all. 

Want to see a few recent examples or dive deeper into your own website translation project? Let’s talk. 

Oomph has been quiet about our excitement for artificial intelligence (A.I.). While the tech world has exploded with new A.I. products, offerings, and add-ons to existing product suites, we have been formulating an approach to recommend A.I.-related services to our clients. 

One of the biggest reasons why we have been quiet is the complexity and the fast-pace of change in the landscape. Giant companies have been trying A.I. with some loud public failures. The investment and venture capitalist community is hyped on A.I. but has recently become cautious as productivity and profit have not been boosted. It is a familiar boom-then-bust of attention that we have seen before — most recently with AR/VR after the Apple Vision Pro five months ago and previously with the Metaverse, Blockchain/NFTs, and Bitcoin. 

There are many reasons to be optimistic about applications for A.I. in business. And there continue to be many reasons to be cautious as well. Just like any digital tool, A.I. has pros and cons and Oomph has carefully evaluated each. We are sharing our internal thoughts in the hopes that your business can use the same criteria when considering a potential investment in A.I. 

Using A.I.: Not If, but How

Most digital tools now have some kind of A.I. or machine-learning built into them. A.I. has become ubiquitous and embedded in many systems we use every day. Given investor hype for companies that are leveraging A.I., more and more tools are likely to incorporate A.I.

This is not a new phenomenon. Grammarly has been around since 2015 and by many measures, it is an A.I. tool — it is trained on human written language to provide contextual corrections and suggestions for improvements.

Recently, though, embedded A.I. has exploded across markets. Many of the tools Oomph team members use every day have A.I. embedded in them, across sales, design, engineering, and project management — from Google Suite and Zoom to Github and Figma.

The market has already decided that business customers want access to time-saving A.I. tools. Some welcome these options, and others will use them reluctantly.

Either way, the question has very quickly moved from should our business use A.I. to how can our business use A.I. tools responsibly?

The Risks that A.I. Pose

Every technological breakthrough comes with risks. Some pundits (both for and against A.I. advancements) have likened its emergence to the Industrial Revolution of the early 20th century. And a high-level of positive significance is possible, while the cultural, societal, and environmental repercussions could also follow a similar trajectory.

A.I. has its downsides. When evaluating A.I. tools as a solution to our client’s problems, we keep this list of drawbacks and negative effects handy, so that we may review it and think about how to mitigate their negative effects:

We have also found that our company values are a lens through which we can evaluate new technology and any proposed solutions. Oomph has three cultural values that form the center of our approach and our mission, and we add our stated 1% For the Planet commitment to that list as well: 

For each of A.I.’s drawbacks, we use the lens of our cultural values to guide our approach to evaluating and mitigating those potential ill effects. 

A.I. is built upon biased and flawed data

At its core, A.I. is built upon terabytes of data and billions, if not trillions, of individual pieces of content. Training data for Large Language Models (LLMs) like Chat GPT, Llama, and Claude encompass mostly public content as well as special subscriptions through relationships with data providers like the New York Times and Reddit. Image generation tools like Midjourney and Adobe Firefly require billions of images to train them and have skirted similar copyright issues while gobbling up as much free public data as they can find. 

Because LLMs require such a massive amount of data, it is impossible to curate those data sets to only what we may deem as “true” facts or the “perfect” images. Even if we were able to curate these training sets, who makes the determination of what to include or exclude?

The training data would need to be free of bias and free of sarcasm (a very human trait) for it to be reliable and useful. We’ve seen this play out with sometimes hilarious results. Google “A.I. Overviews” have told people to put glue on pizza to prevent the cheese from sliding off or to eat one rock a day for vitamins & minerals. Researchers and journalists traced these suggestions back to the training data from Reddit and The Onion.

Information architects have a saying: “All Data is Dirty.” It means no one creates “perfect” data, where every entry is reviewed, cross-checked for accuracy, and evaluated by a shared set of objective standards. Human bias and accidents always enter the data. Even the simple act of deciding what data to include (and therefore, which data is excluded) is bias. All data is dirty.

Bias & flawed data leads to the perpetuation of stereotypes

Many of the drawbacks of A.I. are interrelated — All data is dirty is related to D.E.I. Gender and racial biases surface in the answers A.I. provides. A.I. will perpetuate the harms that these biases produce as they become easier and easier to use and more and more prevalent. These harms are ones which society is only recently grappling with in a deep and meaningful way, and A.I. could roll back much of our progress.

We’ve seen this start to happen. Early reports from image creation tools discuss a European white male bias inherent in these tools — ask it to generate an image of someone in a specific occupation, and receive many white males in the results, unless that occupation is stereotypically “women’s work.” When AI is used to perform HR tasks, the software often advances those it perceives as males more quickly, and penalizes applications that contain female names and pronouns.

The bias is in the data and very, very difficult to remove. The entirety of digital written language over-indexes privileged white Europeans who can afford the tools to become authors. This comparably small pool of participants is also dominantly male, and the content they have created emphasizes white male perspectives. To curate bias out of the training data and create an equally representative pool is nearly impossible, especially when you consider the exponentially larger and larger sets of data new LLM models require for training.

Further, D.E.I. overflows into environmental impact. Last fall, the Fifth National Climate Assessment outlined the country’s climate status. Not only is the U.S. warming faster than the rest of the world, but they directly linked reductions in greenhouse gas emissions with reducing racial disparities. Climate impacts are felt most heavily in communities of color and low incomes, therefore, climate justice and racial justice are directly related.

Flawed data leads to “Hallucinations” & harms Brands

“Brand Safety” and How A.I. can harm Brands

Brand safety is the practice of protecting a company’s brand and reputation by monitoring online content related to the brand. This includes content the brand is directly responsible for creating about itself as well as the content created by authorized agents (most typically customer service reps, but now AI systems as well).

The data that comes out of A.I. agents will reflect on the brand employing the agent. A real life example is Air Canada. The A.I. chatbot gave a customer an answer that contradicted the information in the URL it provided. The customer chose to believe the A.I. answer, while the company tried to say that it could not be responsible if the customer didn’t follow the URL to the more authoritative information. In court, the customer won and Air Canada lost, resulting in bad publicity for the company.

Brand safety can also be compromised when a 3rd party feeds A.I. tools proprietary client data. Some terms and condition statements for A.I. tools are murky while others are direct. Midjourney’s terms state,

“By using the Services, You grant to Midjourney […] a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicensable no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute text and image prompts You input into the Services” 

Midjourney’s Terms of Service Statement

That makes it pretty clear that by using Midjourney, you implicitly agree that your data will become part of their system.

The implication that our client’s data might become available to everyone is a huge professional risk that Oomph avoids. Even using ChatGPT to provide content summaries on NDA data can open hidden risks.

What are “Hallucinations” and why do they happen?

It’s important to remember how current A.I. chatbots work. Like a smartphone’s predictive text tool, LLMs form statements by stitching together words, characters, and numbers based on the probability of each unit succeeding the previously generated units. The predictions can be very complex, adhering to grammatical structure and situational context as well as the initial prompt. Given this, they do not truly understand language or context. 

At best, A.I. chatbots are a mirror that reflects how humans sound without a deep understanding of what any of the words mean. 

A.I. systems are trying its best to provide an accurate and truthful answer without a complete understanding of the words it is using. A “hallucination” can occur for a variety of reasons and it is not always possible to trace their origins or reverse-engineer them out of a system. 

As many recent news stories state, hallucinations are a huge problem with A.I. Companies like IBM and McDonald’s can’t get hallucinations under control and have pulled A.I. from their stores because of the headaches they cause. If they can’t make their investments in A.I. pay off, it makes us wonder about the usefulness of A.I. for consumer applications in general. And all of these gaffes hurt consumer’s perception of the brands and the services they provide.

Poor A.I. answers erode Consumer Trust

The aforementioned problems with A.I. are well-known in the tech industry. In the consumer sphere, A.I. has only just started to break into the public consciousness. Consumers are outcome-driven. If A.I. is a tool that can reliably save them time and reduce work, they don’t care how it works, but they do care about its accuracy. 

Consumers are also misinformed or have a very surface level understanding of how A.I. works. In one study, only 30% of people correctly identified six different applications of A.I. People don’t have a complete picture of how pervasive A.I.-powered services already are.

The news media loves a good fail story, and A.I. has been providing plenty of those. With most of the media coverage of A.I. being either fear-mongering (“A.I. will take your job!”) or about hilarious hallucinations (“A.I. suggests you eat rocks!”), consumers will be conditioned to mistrust products and tools labeled “A.I.” 

And for those who have had a first-hand experience with an A.I. tool, a poor A.I. experience makes all A.I. seem poor. 

A.I.’s appetite for electricity is unsustainable

The environmental impact of our digital lives is invisible. Cloud services that store our lifetime of photographs sound like featherly, lightweight repositories that are actually giant, electricity-guzzling warehouses full of heat-producing servers. Cooling these data factories and providing the electricity to run them are a major infrastructure issue cities around the country face. And then A.I. came along.

While difficult to quantify, there are some scientists and journalists studying this issue, and they have found some alarming statistics: 

While the consumption needs are troubling, quickly creating more infrastructure to support these needs is not possible. New energy grids take multiple years and millions if not billions of dollars of investment. Parts of the country are already straining under the weight of our current energy needs and will continue to do so — peak summer demand is projected to grow by 38,000 megawatts nationwide in the next five years. 

While a data center can be built in about a year, it can take five years or longer to connect renewable energy projects to the grid. While most new power projects built in 2024 are clean energy (solar, wind, hydro), they are not being built fast enough. And utilities note that data centers need power 24 hours a day, something most clean sources can’t provide. It should be heartbreaking that carbon-producing fuels like coal and gas are being kept online to support our data needs.

Oomph’s commitment to 1% for the Planet means that we want to design specific uses for A.I. instead of very broad ones. The environmental impact of A.I.’s energy demands is a major factor we consider when deciding how and when to use A.I.

Using our Values to Guide the Evaluation of A.I.

As we previously stated, our company values provide a lens through which we can evaluate A.I. and look to mitigate its negative effects. Many of the solutions cross over and mitigate more than one effect and represent a shared commitment to extracting the best results from any tool in our set

Smart

Driven

Personal

1% for the Planet

In Summary

While this article feels like we are strongly anti-A.I., we still have optimism and excitement about how A.I. systems can be used to augment and support human effort. Tools created with A.I. can make tasks and interactions more efficient, can help non-creatives jumpstart their creativity, and can eventually become agents that assist with complex tasks that are draining and unfulfilling for humans to perform. 

For consumers or our clients to trust A.I., however, we need to provide ethical evaluation criteria. We can not use A.I. as a solve-all tool when it has clearly displayed limitations. We aim to continue to learn from others, experiment ourselves, and evaluate appropriate uses for A.I. with a clear set of criteria that align with our company culture. 

To have a conversation about how your company might want to leverage A.I. responsibly, please contact us anytime.

Additional Reading List

Everyone’s been saying it (and, frankly, we tend to agree):  We are currently in unprecedented times. It may feel like a cliche. But truly, when you stop and look around right now, not since the advent of the first consumer-friendly smartphone in 2008 has the digital web design and development industry seen such vast technological advances.

A few of these innovations have been kicking around for decades, but they’ve only moved into the greater public consciousness in the past year. Versions of artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbots have been around since the 1960s and even virtual reality (VR)/augmented reality (AR) has been attempted with some success since the 1990s (That Starner). But now, these technologies have reached a tipping point as companies join the rush to create new products that leverage AI and VR/AR. 

What should we do with all this change? Let’s think about the immediate future for a moment (not the long-range future, because who knows what that holds). We at Oomph have been thinking about how we can start to use this new technology now — for ourselves and for our clients. Which ideas that seemed far-fetched only a year ago are now possible? 

For this article, we’ll take a closer look at VR/AR, two digital technologies that either layer on top of or fully replace our real world.

VR/AR and the Vision Pro

Apple’s much-anticipated launch into the headset game shipped in early February 2024. With it came much hype, most centered around the price tag and limited ecosystem (for now). But after all the dust has settled, what has this flagship device told us about the future? 

Meta, Oculus, Sony, and others have been in this space since 2017, but the Apple device has debuted a better experience in many respects. For one, Apple nailed the 3D visuals, using many cameras and low latency to reproduce a digital version of the real world around the wearer— in real time. All of this tells us that VR headsets are moving beyond gaming applications and becoming more mainstream for specific types of interactions and experiences, like virtually visiting the Eiffel Tower or watching the upcoming Summer Olympics.

What Is VR/AR Not Good At?

Comfort

Apple’s version of the device is large, uncomfortable, and too heavy to wear for long. And its competitors are not much better. The device will increasingly become smaller and more powerful, but for now, wearing one as an infinite virtual monitor for the entire workday is impossible.

Space

VR generally needs space for the wearer to move around. The Vision Pro is very good at overlaying virtual items into the physical world around the wearer, but for an application that requires the wearer to be fully immersed in a virtual world, it is a poor experience to pantomime moving through a confined space. Immersion is best when the movements required to interact are small or when the wearer has adequate space to participate.

Haptics

“Haptic”  feedback is the sense that physical objects provide. Think about turning a doorknob: You feel the surface, the warmth or coolness of the material, how the object can be rotated (as opposed to pulled like a lever), and the resistance from the springs. 

Phones provide small amounts of haptic feedback in the form of vibrations and sounds. Haptics are on the horizon for many VR platforms but have yet to be built into headset systems. For now, haptics are provided by add-on products like this haptic gaming chair.

What Is VR/AR Good For? 

Even without haptics and free spatial range, immersion and presence in VR is very effective. It turns out that the brain only requires sight and sound to create a believable sense of immersion. Have you tried a virtual roller coaster? If so, you know it doesn’t take much to feel a sense of presence in a virtual environment. 

Live Events

VR and AR’s most promising applications are with live in-person and televised events. In addition to a flat “screen” of the event, AR-generated spatial representations of the event and ways to interact with the event are expanding. A prototype video with Formula 1 racing is a great example of how this application can increase engagement with these events.

Imagine if your next virtual conference were available in VR and AR. How much more immersed would you feel? 

Museum and Cultural Institution Experiences

Similar to live events, AR can enhance museum experiences greatly. With AR, viewers can look at an object in its real space — for example, a sarcophagus would actually appear in a tomb — and access additional information about that object, like the time and place it was created and the artist.

Museums are already experimenting with experiences that leverage your phone’s camera or VR headsets. Some have experimented with virtually showing artwork by the same artist that other museums own to display a wider range of work within an exhibition. 

With the expansion of personal VR equipment like the Vision Pro, the next obvious step is to bring the museum to your living room, much like the National Gallery in London bringing its collection into public spaces (see bullet point #5).

Try Before You Buy (TBYB)

Using a version of AR with your phone to preview furniture in your home is not new. But what other experiences can benefit from an immersive “try before you buy” experience? 

What’s Possible With VR/AR?

The above examples of what VR/AR is good at are just a few ways the technology is already in use — each of which can be a jumping-off point for leveraging VR/AR for your own business.  

But what are some new frontiers that have yet to be fully explored? What else is possible? 

Continue the AR/VR Conversation

The Vision Pro hasn’t taken the world by storm, as Apple likely hoped. It may still be too early for the market to figure out what AR/VR is good for. But we think it won’t go away completely, either. With big investments like Apple’s, it is reasonable to assume the next version will find a stronger foothold in the market.

Here at Oomph, we’ll keep pondering and researching impactful ways that tomorrow’s technology can help solve today’s problems. We hope these ideas have inspired some of your own explorations, and if so, we’d love to hear more about them. 

Drop us a line and let’s chat about how VR/AR could engage your audience. 

Portable Document Format, or PDF, files have been around since 1992, offering a software-agnostic solution for presenting and sharing digital documents. For organizations that existed before the ’90s, PDFs became an easy way to move from physical to digital; they could take the same documents they used to print and now share them digitally as PDFs.

A few years after PDFs were officially launched, CSS came onto the scene as the preferred computer language for styling web pages. Over the following three decades, PDF capabilities grew alongside CSS and other digital technologies, giving creators new ways to lay out and publish their content.

Fast forward to today. Developers worldwide (Oomph among them) have been making websites for a while. We have online forms, interactive databases, and of course, plain old text on a webpage. And yet, PDFs persist.

What’s So Bad About PDFs?

Mobile Phones

Think of the last time you tried looking at a PDF on your phone. First off, there’s the issue of finding it. Depending on your operating system and browser, the file might open right in a new browser tab, or it might download and disappear into some folder you forgot about until this exact moment. (And of course, when you find the folder, you realize this is the fifth time you’ve downloaded this same file.)

Now that you’ve opened the file, you see the tiny text of an 8.5” x 11” page shrunk to a quarter of its intended size. So you pinch, zoom, and drag the page around your screen. You might rotate your phone to the dreaded horizontal orientation to fit a whole line of text at once. If this PDF is a fillable form, you may be simply out of luck on your mobile device unless you’re ready to go down a rabbit hole of separate apps and workarounds.

If, for just a minute, we want to ignore the massive amount of mobile usage — including the 15% of American adults who fully depend on phones for internet access — there’s plenty more cause for PDF concern.

Accessibility

Let’s talk about accessibility. There’s a good chance that your digital properties, including PDFs, are legally required to conform to accessibility standards. This is true for government entities — both federal and more recently, state, local, and district governments, thanks to a Title II update — as well as businesses and nonprofit organizations. 

Beyond the legalities, the CDC reports that about 27% of American adults have a disability. While not all 70 million of these people use a screen reader, we know some people use assistive technology even if they don’t identify as having a disability. (When’s the last time you pressed a button to open a door just because your hands were full or to let a large group of people pass through?) Improvements for the sake of accessibility, more often than not, lead to a more effortless, more intuitive experience for everyone.

While it’s possible to make a PDF accessible, the process for doing so is extensive and involves several manual checks. This can be so time-consuming and specialized that businesses and professionals dedicate themselves entirely to remediating PDFs for accessibility. 

Of course, making a website accessible isn’t as easy as plug-and-play, but accessibility should already be built into the system. Content editors who are not technical professionals can publish accessible content with relative ease on an accessible website platform (as long as we can all remember not to link “click here”) but are typically left to their own devices when it comes to documents.

Brand Reputation

Beyond these critical issues, there are a few more problems that are less vital to users but could have a negative business impact. 

For one, documents like PDFs open up a whole world of styling possibilities. The flexibility might feel like a benefit at first, but give it a little time and I’m certain you’ll start seeing inconsistencies from one document to the next. Add in a few more people preparing these files, and those small differences will pile up, giving users an impression that maybe the business is not quite as put together as they thought. (Not to mention that every change in presentation is asking users to understand a new format, slowing them down or confusing them.) Consistency is key to building a trustworthy brand; every unnecessary variation erodes that trust.

There’s also the near certainty that the information provided in PDFs will need updating. When that happens, you’d better make sure to delete the old file in favor of the new one and update all your links. Since the file format made it easy (or necessary) for users to download the content to their devices, there’s a greater chance that they’ll hold onto old information, even though a newer version is now on the website.

Finally, storing important information in PDFs gives you less control over optimizing for search engines. Google has a tough time reading PDF content (though proper tagging and metadata will help), so these files often rank lower in search results than webpages with similar content. The more that content lives in PDFs and not webpages, the more your SEO will suffer, and the less likely people will be to find and consume your content.

What You Can Do Instead

Like I said, PDFs solved a real problem… 30 years ago. They still have their place today, but more often than not, there’s a better way.

Does It Need To Be a PDF?

When the PDF is just a basic document of text, we recommend turning that into a basic webpage of text. It’s easy to say, but making it happen might mean taking a fresh look at why that information is in a PDF in the first place.

Custom Layout

If you’re using PDFs to create a certain layout, consider how you can achieve something similar through CSS. You might be able to build something you like using the layout and style options already available in your CMS, but you probably won’t create a perfect 1:1 match. 

Any design in a Word or Google document can also exist on a webpage. If there’s a certain design you use time and time again in your PDFs that you just can’t recreate with the web editing tools, you might need some new code. It becomes an exercise in prioritization to weigh the benefits of building a custom layout against the time and cost of doing so. 

Also, remember that a design that works well for a printed page may not be the best design for a responsive webpage. Rather than recreating the exact layout digitally, ask yourself what you’re trying to achieve with the layout and whether there’s a better way to meet that same goal. While unique designs may be more difficult to create on a webpage than a PDF, I’d urge you to consider this a benefit in most cases. Limitations create consistency, which will most likely simplify the experience for both content editors and users.

Designing for Print

Speaking of print, that might be another reason for including PDFs. You may know that a portion of your audience will want to print out the page, maybe to annotate it or to have it on hand as they complete a related task.

In reality, you can serve this user without sacrificing everyone else’s online experience. Developers can use targeted CSS to customize how a webpage will print or export — including what content will display and its styling. Going this route affects how the page will print with the browser tool, and you could even provide a “Print” link if that’s a common need. Ultimately, targeted CSS means the printed content can look as similar or different from the webpage as needed. 

Process 

Another common cause for PDFs is that they’re simply baked into the content publishing process. Whether from fear of changing approved content or a lack of knowledge around what’s possible in the CMS, content teams may use PDF uploads as a fallback for publishing the information quickly and moving on.

A solution here may be to bring your site editor into the process sooner. As the web expert, they can speak to what will work well and what might need to change when moving the content to a webpage. The site editor may need to be heavily involved at first, but their load should lighten as the writers and other team members learn the website’s needs. 

In some cases, it might also be worth building new CMS templates, such as content types. This can be especially helpful for reinforcing consistency when several people manage the website. If the content needs to follow a specific format, a highly structured edit form can act as an outline. You can share this template with the original content creators so that everyone is working toward a shared goal. 

Repurposed Content

Most likely, your organization does more than manage a website. Maybe you have a brick-and-mortar office with brochures and paperwork, or you host webinars with branded slide decks. There are plenty of reasons you might create and share documents other than uploading them onto your website, but you still want the same information available online. And since it’s already put together, the easiest way to share it could be to upload the PDF.

Unfortunately, this is a situation where easy doesn’t cut it. The same tri-fold brochure that looks professional and appealing on a reception desk can be confusing and annoying on a computer or phone. A printed form works great for in-office visitors, but a web form can give users the benefits of autocomplete and progressive disclosure they’ve come to expect online. 

The best experience for your users requires attention to their context. Ultimately, we need to be intentional and thoughtful about what users need in their current situation, which may require different presentations of the same content.

Embrace Digital

We’re not expecting to see the end of PDFs on websites anytime soon. For one, sometimes it’s simply out of your control. Maybe you’re providing an official government form that only exists as a fillable PDF. Even if the document is internally produced, change may be lengthy and involved, requiring buy-in from those who hold the purse strings.

While we wait for the world to change, we can advocate for a better user experience. If a PDF “needs” to stay, maybe you can duplicate the most important content onto the page linking to it. If you have any control over the document itself, you can test for accessibility and make sure it’s properly tagged. Get started with the tools and guidance we’ve collected in this accessibility resources document.

How easily your audience can access your information and services sets the tone for how they perceive your organization. The good news is that there’s so much you can do to make their experience positive, no matter how they choose to interact with your content. If you need help, let us know.

A world without third-party cookies is fast approaching. Big-name browsers like Safari and Firefox already block them by default, and Google Chrome —  the biggest browser of them all —  is set to follow. 

First, a quick refresher: Websites use cookies to store data in your browser specific to that website and other sites. The question, though, is who the website is storing the data for. Third-party cookies store data that allows advertising services to track your behavior on any given site, while first-party cookies are those a website uses for its own purposes. 

Like most things, not all cookies are created equal. As browsers transition to these new defaults, some will make the grade, while others will be blocked for good. What does this mean for your website, and how can you get ahead of the change? We’ll walk you through it. 

Are Cookies Really Going Away? 

That depends on the type of cookies your site uses. Browsers are slowly blocking third-party cookies by default — those associated with cross-site tracking for ad networks like Facebook or LinkedIn — but first-site, or same-site, cookies will remain. 

That means that if retargeting is essential to your paid marketing strategy, you may need to rethink your approach. But any cookies you use to support your site features and functionality can keep on keeping on, assuming your users have agreed to the use of those cookies on your site. For example, you may be able to keep track of previously viewed content and use that information to suggest other relevant content to that user. So don’t say goodbye to your cookie consent services either; you still have to give users the chance to opt out of any first-party cookies. 

Why Now? Haven’t We Been Using Cookies Forever? 

While cookies have been a web-surfing staple for almost as long as we’ve been using the internet, that’s not necessarily a good thing. 

Legislation like GDPR in Europe, the California Consumer Privacy Act, and the New York Privacy Act are tightening restrictions on the use of consumer data, and rapidly increasing cybersecurity threats in recent years have illuminated the risks of large-scale data storage. Consumers have also begun to prize their privacy, realizing that their information is valuable and no organization should be looking over their shoulder as they browse. 

Ultimately, phasing out third-party cookies is about doing what’s best for your users. Making the move now can help instill trust in your website, since users know you aren’t capturing their data behind the scenes. Cookie consent forms also put the data you do use out in the open, showing users that your organization takes their privacy seriously and is prepared to protect it. 

How Will The End of Third-Party Cookies Impact My Industry? 

Not all organizations will feel the shift equally. We’ve seen some verticals get ahead of the curve, while others are naturally less reliant on third-party cookies. Here are some key industry-specific areas to consider. 

Healthcare

Strict privacy laws and regulations like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) have turned healthcare organizations into pioneers in this area. The Office of Civil Rights even published a bulletin warning organizations about third-party cookies. 

Many of the healthcare brands we support at Oomph are already focused on safeguarding user privacy because they’re used to doing it with medical records. One of our clients, for example, is already exploring adopting an in-house analytics tool hosted on their own server. If your healthcare organization is relying on third-party cookies for any marketing efforts, analytic insights, or other website features, start thinking now about the best way to phase them out. 

Higher Education

Many institutions we work with are using third-party cookies because of digital efforts to drive student enrollment. When implementing personalization cookies, be sure they are implemented with the proper “SameSite” attribute value. Then be sure to engage your vendors; we’ve encouraged many of our higher education clients to explore how their vendors are preparing for this transition.  

Nonprofits

Like higher education, nonprofits should review the vendors and larger ad networks they rely on to build their volunteer base or drive donations. Many nonprofits don’t use these services, but those that do should get ahead of the change, otherwise you may stand to lose an important fundraising channel. 

4 Steps To Prepare for the End of Third-Party Cookies

Cookies, analytics, and cross-site tracking might all sound like areas best left to the pros. But there’s a lot you can do to prepare your organization for the move away from cookies, as well as critical opportunities to pull in a vendor to maintain the functionality you need. 

Audit Your Site

A website audit should always be your first step. Taking stock of the cookies you use is the best way to get a handle on the changes you’ll need to make. Tapping your web partner is a great idea here, too. Your vendor should be able to identify existing third-party cookie warnings, which can help shape your audit. 

For example, while we were updating a client’s email marketing integration recently, Chrome notified our developer that our client’s vendor was sending third-party cookies. We then reached out to the vendor to continue the conversation, knowing that those cookies had to be addressed.

Identify Affected Cookies 

The goal of your audit is to identify all third-party cookies that won’t make the cut. Don’t stop by just listing the cookie, either. Review what function it serves and the role it plays in your organization’s digital footprint. You may have to get rid of the cookie, but that doesn’t mean you have to ditch the strategy it’s tied to. 

Reach Out to Your Vendors

Ask vendors about their plans to handle the transition away from third-party cookies, and feel out whether they’ll still be able to offer the service they currently provide. Consider it a red flag if the vendor is uninformed or unprepared; you might have to seek out alternatives if there’s even the slightest chance your current vendor will be defunct by the end of the year. 

Design Alternatives

The end of third-party cookies is daunting, but it’s also exciting. Take this opportunity to innovate on your users’ behalf. How can you design engaging new experiences that still exceed their expectations? That’s more than possible, so long as you have the right tools in place.

This could be a self-hosted analytics tool you build yourself or new local storage solutions to replace the role of cookies. You might also consider a fully authenticated experience for the users of your site. Lean on a trusted partner here, too. Vendors with website expertise can guide you toward the right solution for you and your users.

Cookies on the Brain? 

For many organizations, this is the most they’ve thought about cookies in years. Third-party cookies have become so essential to building a business online, and yet they’ve largely flown under our radar. But while this change may feel overwhelming, making the switch doesn’t have to be. 

Here at Oomph, we see this as a golden opportunity for organizations to put their users first, and we’re already taking steps to help our clients do just that. 

Need a hand bringing your website into a world beyond third-party cookies? Let’s talk about it.

THE BRIEF

While One Percent for America (OPA) had an admirable goal of helping eligible immigrants become U.S. citizens, the project faced a major stumbling block. Many immigrants had already been misled by various lending institutions, payday loans, or high-interest credit cards. As a result, the OPA platform would need a sense of trustworthiness and authority to shine through.

The platform also had to handle a broad array of tasks through a complex set of workflows, backstops, and software integrations. These tasks included delivering content, signing up users, verifying eligibility, connecting to financial institutions, managing loan data and investment balances, and electronically sending funds to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

THE APPROACH

Given the challenges, our work began with a month-long discovery process, probing deeper into the audience, competitive landscape, customer journeys, and technological requirements for the platform. Here’s what we learned.

The Borrower Experience

Among those deep in the citizenship process and close to finishing the paperwork, many are simply waiting to have the funds to conclude their journey. For them, we designed as simple a workflow as possible to create an account, pass a security check, and apply for a loan.

Other users who are just starting the process need to understand whether they’re eligible for citizenship and what the process entails. We knew this would require smart, in-depth content to answer their questions and provide guidance — which was also a crucial component in earning their trust. Giving away genuinely helpful information, combined with carefully chosen language and photography, helped lend authenticity to OPA’s stated mission.

The Investor Experience

OPA sought to crowdfund capital from small investors, not institutions, creating a community-led funding source that could scale to meet borrowers’ needs. A key innovation is that funders can choose between two options: making tax-deductible donations or short-term loans.

If an investor makes a loan, at the end of the term they can decide to reinvest for another term, turn the money into a donation, or withdraw the funds. To reinforce the circular nature of the platform, we designed the experience so that borrowers could become investors themselves. The platform makes it easy for borrowers to change their intent and access different tools. Maturity dates are prominently displayed alongside “Lend Again” and “Donate” actions. Testimonials from borrowers on the dashboard reinforce the kinds of people who are helped by an investment.

The Mobile Experience

Our research made it clear the mobile experience had to be best in class, as many users would either prefer using a phone or didn’t have regular access to a tablet or computer. But, that didn’t mean creating a mobile app in addition to a desktop website. Instead, by designing a universal web app, we built a more robust experience — more powerful than most mobile apps — that can be used anywhere, on any device.

However, tasks like signing up for an account or applying for a loan need to be as easy on a mobile device as on a desktop. Key UX elements like step-by-step workflows, large touch targets, generous spacing on form fields, soft colors, and easy-to-read fonts produced a highly user-friendly interface.

THE RESULTS

Together with our technology partners, Craftsman, Motionpoint, and Platform.sh, we built an innovative digital platform that meets its users exactly where they are, from both a technological and cultural standpoint.

This groundbreaking work earned us a Gold Medal from the inaugural 2022 Anthem Awards, in the Innovation in Human and Civil Rights category. The award recognizes new techniques and services that advance communities and boost contributory funds.

In our ongoing partnership with OPA, Oomph will continue working to expand the business model with new features. We’re proud to have helped build this impactful resource to support the community of new Americans.

High-quality content management systems (CMS) and digital experience platforms (DXP) are the backbone of modern websites, helping you deliver powerful, personalized user experiences. The catch? You have to pick your platform first. 

At Oomph, we have a lot of love for open-source platforms like Drupal and WordPress. Over the years, we’ve also built applications for our clients using headless CMS tools, like Contentful and CosmicJS. The marketplace for these solutions continues to grow exponentially, including major players like Adobe Experience Manager, Sitecore, and Optimizely.

With so many options, developers and non-developers with a project on the horizon typically start by asking themselves, “Which CMS or DXP is the best fit for my website or application?” While that is no doubt an excellent question to consider, I think it’s equally important to ask, “Who is going to implement the solution?” 

CMS/DXP Solutions Are More Alike Than You Might Think

I recently attended the annual Healthcare Internet Conference and spoke with quite a few healthcare marketers about their CMS tools. I noticed a common thread: Many people think their CMS (some of which I mentioned above) is hard to use and doesn’t serve them well. 

That may very well be the case. Not all CMS tools are created equal; some are better suited for specific applications. However, most modern CMS and DXP tools have many of the same features in common, they just come at different price points. So here’s the multi-million dollar question: If most of these products provide access to the same or similar tools, why are so many customers displeased with them? 

Common Challenges of CMS/DXP Implementation

Often, we find that CMS users get frustrated because the tool they chose wasn’t configured to meet their specific needs. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it was set up incorrectly. That’s the beauty of many of today’s CMS and DXP products: They don’t take a one-size-fits-all approach. Instead, they allow for flexibility and customization to ensure that each customer gets the most out of the product.

While enticing, that flexibility also burdens the user with ensuring that their system is implemented effectively for their specific use case. In our experience, implementation is the make-or-break of a website development project. These are just a handful of things that can derail the process:

  1. The implementation partner didn’t fully understand how their client works and configure features accordingly.
  2. The demands of user experience overshadowed the needs of content editors and admins. 
  3. Hefty licensing fees ate away at the budget, leaving behind funds that don’t quite cover a thorough implementation. 
  4. The project was rushed to meet a tight deadline. 
  5. The CMS introduces new features over time that add complexity to the admin or editing experience. 
  6. Old features get sunsetted as new capabilities take their place. 

Most of the work we do at Oomph is to help our clients implement new websites and applications using content management systems like Drupal. We have decades of combined experience helping our clients create the ideal user experience for their target audience while also crafting a thoughtful content editing and admin experience that is easy to use.

But what does that look like in practice? 

4 Steps for a Successful CMS Implementation

Implementation can be the black box of setting up your CMS: You don’t know what you don’t know. So, we like to get our clients into a demo environment as soon as possible to help them better understand what they need from their CMS. Here’s how we use it to navigate successful CMS implementation: 

  1. Assess the Capabilities of the CMS

The first step can be the most simple at face value. Consider what the CMS needs to do for you, then find a CMS that includes all of those features. Content modeling (more on that below) is a key part of that process, but so is auditing your team’s abilities. 

Some teams may be developer-savvy and can handle less templated content-authoring features. Others may need a much more drag-and-drop experience. Either use case is normal and acceptable, but what matters is that you identify your needs and find both a CMS and an implementation process that meets them. That leads us to the next point.

  1. Test-Drive the CMS Early and Often

You wouldn’t buy a car without test-driving it first. Yet we find that people are often more than willing to license a CMS without looking under the hood.

Stepping into the CMS for a test drive is a huge part of getting the content editing experience right. We’ve been designing and engineering websites and platforms using CMS tools for well over a decade, and we’ve learned a thing or two along the way about good content management and editing experiences. 

Even with out-of-the-box, vanilla Drupal, the sky’s the limit for how you can configure it. But that also means that nothing is configured, and it can be difficult to get a sense of how best to configure and use it. Rather than diving into the deep end, we work with our clients to test the waters. We immediately set up a project sandbox that offers pre-configured content types, allowing you to enter content and play with a suite of components within the sleek drag-and-drop interface.

  1. Align User Experience with Content Authoring

Beyond pre-configured content and components, our sandbox sites include a stylish, default theme. The idea is to give you a taste both of what your live site could look like and what your content authoring experience might be. Since so many teams struggle to balance those two priorities, this can be a helpful way to figure out how your CMS can give you both. 

  1. Finalize Your Features & Capabilities 

While a demo gives you a good idea of the features you’ll need, it might include features you don’t. But discovering where our pre-built options aren’t a good fit is a good thing — it helps us understand exactly what YOUR TEAM does and does not need.

Our goal is to give you something tangible to react to, whether that’s love at first type or a chance to uncover capabilities that would serve you better. We’ve found this interactive yet structured process is the CMS silver bullet that leads to a better outcome. 

Content Modeling

Another key part of our project workflow is what we call content modeling. During this phase, we work with you to identify the many content types you’ll have on your website or application. Then, we can visualize them in a mapping system to determine things like: 

With a solid content model in place, we can have a higher level of confidence that our CMS implementation will create the right content editing experience for your team. From there, we actually implement the content model in the CMS as soon as possible so that you can test it out and we can make refinements before getting too far along in the process.

Content Moderation & Governance

Many clients tell us they either have too much or too little control over their content. In some cases, their content management system is so templated or rigid that marketing teams can’t quickly spin up landing pages and instead have to rely on development teams to assist. Other teams have too much freedom, allowing employees to easily deploy content that hasn’t been approved by the appropriate team members or strays from company brand standards. 

Here at Oomph, our mantra is balance. A good content editing process needs both flexibility and governance, so teams can create content when they need to, but avoid publishing content that doesn’t meet company standards. Through discovery, we work with clients to determine which content types need flexibility and which ones don’t. 

If a content type needs to be flexible, we create a framework that allows for agility while still ensuring that users can only select approved colors, font types, and font sizes. We also identify which content needs to be held in moderation and approved before it can be published on the website. 

Taking the time to discuss governance in advance creates a CMS experience that strikes the right balance between marketing freedom and brand adherence. 

Implementation Turns a Good CMS Into a Great One

Modern CMS/DXP solutions have mind-blowing features, and they will only continue to get more complex over time. But the reality is that while picking a CMS that has the features you need is important, how it’s configured and implemented might matter even more. After all, how helpful is it to have a CMS with embedded artificial intelligence if making simple copy updates to your home page is a nightmare? 

Implementation is the “it” factor that makes the difference between a CMS you love and one you’d rather do your job without.

Interested in solving your CMS headaches with better implementation? Let’s talk.

Have you ever waved to someone and they didn’t wave back? Awkward, right? But are you sure they could see you and recognize you? Was the sun in their eyes? Were you too far away? Were you wearing a face mask?

There is a similar situation with your branding on your website. On a smaller mobile device, is your logo legible, or are the words shrunk down and too small? Are the colors high-contrast enough to be seen on a sunny day? Is there consistency between your social media avatar and your website, between your print materials and your digital advertising? Can customers recognize your brand wherever it might be displayed? 

For your brand to be the most successful, it takes a little extra effort to think through all of these possible scenarios. But it’s worth it, or your customers will give you the cold shoulder, whether they intended to or not. 

This extra bit of strategy and planning around your brand is called “Responsive Branding.” Just like responsive design, where your website’s content adapts to the device a customer is using, responsive branding adapts to the device, the medium, and the platform while also considering situations like low light, high light, animated, or static.

Oomph works with organizations across industries to build or refresh responsive brands that serve and delight their users across the full spectrum of digital experiences. Here’s what we’ve learned about responsive branding and our tips for creating one that works. 

What Is Responsive Branding?

Let’s first start with what you’ve probably already heard — responsive web design. Coined by Ethan Marcotte in 2010, the “responsive” part came to mean that a web design responded to the size of the screen, from a phone to a tablet to a widescreen desktop monitor. 

Then came responsive logos. These take the elements of the main logo and adapt them for different sizes and use cases. A logo might have too much detail to be legible as a small social media icon, for example.

Responsive Branding blends these ideas and looks at the design system holistically. A successful responsive brand may include:

Why Responsive Branding Matters

Your business makes a huge investment in building a brand that stands apart from the competition while communicating your personality and value. You are building trust with customers through every interaction. When your brand works well in one situation but not another, it erodes trust. 

A strong brand will be clear, understandable, and memorable for all users in all situations. Whether you have physical locations or digital ones, the brand works with the same consistent strength and message every time.

When you invest in a responsive brand, you: 

3 Elements of a Responsive Brand

A responsive brand is more than a shape-shifting logo. The most responsive brands make strategic use of these three elements: 

1. Logo

Your logo is the first piece of your brand that customers will recognize. Using a single-state logo can compromise that impression — a logo that looks great at a large scale is often unintelligible as a small icon. 

Responsive logo designs help ensure your logomark is clear and impactful no matter where you apply it. Beyond the size considerations we mentioned, it should include different formats like horizontal, vertical, and square to support many different digital, social, and print platforms. 

Some other techniques we use to create scalable logos include:

Oomph Tip: It’s okay to take several design rounds to get it right. Iterating helps uncover where you’ll use the logo, what it must convey, and which colors and iconography can best support that purpose. We went through several design iterations with our client AskRI before settling on a bold, simple font and clear chat bubble icon that plays off the state of Rhode Island’s distinctive shape. 

Color Palette

A responsive color palette is less about picking complementary shades on a color wheel and more about creating an experience that works in all situations. People with visual impairments and people on low-lit smartphones, for example, rely on high-contrast color combinations to engage with your brand. 

Start by following the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which include specific recommendations for color contrast ratios. Colors that meet that standard include light text with dark backgrounds, or vice versa. 

Depending on where your brand appears, you may need to adjust your color palette for different settings. For example, your full-color logo might look stunning against a solid white background but becomes illegible against bright or dark colors. A single color logo is useful for some digital use cases like Windows web icons and iOS Pinned Tabs. In non-digital spaces, single color logos are great when color printing isn’t an option, such as with engraving or embroidery. Build out alternate color variations where necessary to make sure your palette works with you – not against you – across your materials. 

Oomph Tip: If your brand palette is already set in stone, try playing with the brightness or saturation of the values to meet recommendations. Often your brand colors have a little wiggle room when combinations are already close to passing corformance ratios. Check out our article about this issue for more pointers.

Typography and Layouts

Responsiveness is also important to consider when structuring web pages or marketing collateral. The most legible layouts will incorporate adaptable typography with clear contrast and simple scaling. 

When selecting a font, be sure to think about: 

Oomph Tip: Don’t go it alone. Tools like Typescale and Material UI’s The Type System can simplify typography selection by recommending font sets that meet usability and scalability requirements. And the U.S. Design System has some suggestions as to which typefaces are the most accessible.

How To Get Started With Responsive Branding

To create a responsive brand that resonates, you first have to identify what elements you need and why you need them. That second part is your secret sauce: finding a balance between a design your users can recognize and one that inspires them. 

A design audit can zero in on the needs of your brand and your audience, so you can create a responsive design system that meets both. Not sure where to start? Let’s talk.

Change is the only constant in life, and the same goes for accessibility. Our understanding of how to create truly accessible websites is always evolving, and so are the standards for measuring if we’ve succeeded. 

The most recent update to the Website Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) — released on October 5, 2023 — is the latest attempt to help brands make their digital experiences more accessible for all users.

Don’t panic, WCAG 2.2 isn’t an overhaul. But it does shift the previous standards, delivering more specific and, in some cases, more realistic guidelines that make compliance easier (good news, website managers!). While WCAG 2.2 isn’t cause for alarm, it is something to get out in front of. Here’s what to know about WCAG, the ins and outs of the latest updates, and what it all means for your website.

What Is WCAG, Anyway? 

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines set the standard for accessible website design. WCAG first issued design guidance in 1999, but the 2008 WCAG 2.0 laid the groundwork for accessibility today. Those standards created a framework for designing websites that are perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust for people of varying abilities. 

2018’s WCAG 2.1 wasn’t a radical departure from its predecessor, but it did add criteria related to mobile devices and users with vision and cognitive impairments. By 2023, accessibility had become widely understood and embraced as essential for inclusive design. That shift helped usher in WCAG 2.2, an update based on multiple years of research and review.

WCAG 2.2 adds nine new success criteria split across three different levels, A, AA, and AAA:

The WCAG 2.2 update didn’t just add criteria; it made some criteria obsolete, others weaker, and still others more essential than ever. Specifically, WCAG 2.2 promoted 2.4.7 Focus Visible from Level AA to Level A, which means all websites will need visual indicators that show which page feature is in focus. It also changed the recommended size of touch targets, making it easier for designers everywhere to comply.

What WCAG Standard Am I Required to Meet? 

The standard you’re required to meet depends on your industry: 

Though there is no official standard in courts, the DOJ has referenced WCAG 2.1 Level AA in past filings. We expect the courts to slowly start referencing 2.2 as cases catch up, but it might take another year for version 2.2 to become the standard. 

While wanting to stay out of court is understandable, legal requirements are only one reason to adopt WCAG. Millions of users around the world use screen readers and other assistive devices. Those users have buying power and they want to engage with your organization, whether that’s registering to vote, signing up for a class, or making an appointment with their healthcare provider. When your website is accessible, you’re able to connect with the broadest audience possible — likely earning more loyal users in the process.

WCAG 2.2 Checklist

While achieving inclusive website design is an exciting prospect, the nuts and bolts of getting there can feel anything but. Here, we help you visualize what the new guidelines mean in practice. You might be surprised by how accessible your website already is. 

Guideline 2.4: Navigable

The standards under guideline 2.4 address anything that will make it easier for users to move through your website.

2.4.11 Focus Not Obscured (Minimum) (AA)

2.4.12 Focus Not Obscured (Enhanced) (AAA)

2.4.13 Focus Appearance (AAA)

Guideline 2.5: Input Modalities

An “input” is an action a user takes to elicit a response from your website — think clicking a button or dragging and dropping a feature. These standards govern the design of those inputs. 

2.5.7 Dragging Movements (AA)

2.5.8 Target Size (Minimum) (AA)

Guideline 3.2: Predictable

This guideline covers repeating features that may appear across your web pages, such as email sign-up forms or support widgets. 

3.2.6 Consistent Help (A)

Guideline 3.3: Input Assistance

Many websites include elements that help users take certain actions. This could include directing a user to re-enter information or to make sure two fields match. Guideline 3.3 addresses this type of assistance, increasing WCAG’s support of those with cognitive disabilities. This puts the onus on developers to provide simple and secure methods for all users.

3.3.7 Redundant Entry (A)

3.3.8 Accessible Authentication (Minimum) (AA)

3.3.9 Accessible Authentication (Enhanced) (AAA)

Walking the Walk of WCAG

A commitment to accessibility is two-fold. It requires understanding what the most recent guidelines are (the talk) and putting those guidelines into practice (the walk). 

While it might seem like Level AAA accessibility is the way to go, the reality is that accessible websites are nuanced. Some level of accessibility is non-negotiable, but the ideal level for your site very much depends on your industry, your users, and how mature your website is — all factors we can better assess with an accessibility audit. 

If you’re building a new website, embedding WCAG principles is smart. But if you’re WCAG 2.1 compliant and a refresh is a year or two off, WCAG 2.2 may be able to wait. Curious about where your website stands? Let’s talk about it.

The world of digital accessibility can be daunting. There are many regulations and ways in which a website can be accessible or inaccessible. Many of us don’t understand what a good or bad experience looks like, and we think we can’t possibly understand people who rely solely on assistive technology to use the web. 

It doesn’t have to be daunting, though. And with anything, the key is to start small. To those who create websites or own/manage one, the first step to understanding accessibility is empathy. If more people used assistive technology, more people would understand the difference between a terrible experience and a great one. Don’t be scared of learning about accessibility tools, because you might already be more familiar with them than you realize.

Have you ever broken your dominant hand and been forced to use a keyboard instead of a mouse or trackpad? Have you tried to complete a payment form really quickly to snag concert tickets, and figured out that using the keyboard can be much faster? 

Have you been in loud surroundings and tried to watch a video? How great are captions? Have you realized that captions are assistive technology? There are alternate modes of consuming content and using a digital product that are beneficial to a much wider audience than the audience it was created for. 

With some instruction, we hope more people feel comfortable using a keyboard to navigate a website. We also hope that more of you are brave enough to try a screen reader as well, or at least watch our video to experience what that experience can be like. 

Video Tutorial

Our video is 37 minutes and we provide a break-down of the different minute-marks below if you’d like to jump to a certain area. (All cookies must be accepted for the video to play. You may also view on YouTube directly.)

Table of Contents

  1. 00:00 — Using a Keyboard
    1. 02:00 — The tab key
    2. 02:20 — A “Skip to Content” link and why that is so useful
    3. 03:40 — “Focus ring” style
    4. 04:20 — An example of an inaccessible drop-down menu
    5. 05:40 — An example of an inaccessible link (no focus ring)
    6. 07:40 — Common article card patterns and how they work with a keyboard
  2. 10:45 — The Screen Reader Experience
    1. 11:10 — Invoking VoiceOver with Command F5
    2. 12:35 — Tabbing through interactive elements
    3. 12:54 — Skip to Content link
    4. 13:07 — Company logo
    5. 13:55 — Projects link
    6. 14:31 — Topics
    7. 15:55 — About Us link, inaccessible to keyboard users
    8. 16:16 — Reading of non-interactive elements with Control Option arrows
    9. 16:50 — Reading content, Headings, links
    10. 18:50 — Visually hidden heading but screen reader accessible
    11. 19:55 — Alt text image examples
    12. 20:06 — Kittens, no alt tag present
    13. 21:06 — Doggos, empty alt tag
    14. 23:00 — Squirrels, descriptive alt text
    15. 23:48 — Article content examples
    16. 23:53 — Article 1 example, too many links
    17. 25:37 — Article 2 example, too much content
    18. 26:32 — Article 3 example, hidden content
    19. 27:44 — Article 4 example, alternate pattern
    20. 30:02 — Voiceover’s Rotor Feature, control option U
    21. 30:15 — Headings menu
    22. 30:55 — Empty heading element
    23. 31:50 — Other Rotor menus
    24. 32:18 — Non-visited Links menu
    25. 33:01 — All Links menu
    26. 33:40 — “Click here” and “Read more” link text
    27. 35:09 — Landmarks menu
    28. 35:25 — Form Controls menu
  3. 36:06 VoiceOver off and wrap up

For those who want to learn a little more, below we collect a few keyboard command cheatsheets for navigating a webpage or using VoiceOver on a Mac. Links to additional resources for setting up and getting started with VoiceOver are also included.

More Resources

Keyboard User Cheatsheet

VoiceOver Cheatsheet

These key commands reflect the default set-up for Mac OSX — I have not made any modifications. Of course, power users will modify these commands to fit their needs. 

The default VoiceOver key command combination is ^Control ⌥Option. This combination is used to ensure key combinations do not conflict with other quick key commands through the OS and Apps.

Many key commands for navigating a webpage are the same as a Keyboard user. Return, Spacebar, and Arrow keys all work the same.

Additional Resources to Start Using VoiceOver

Conclusion

With some practice, we hope you might find that using a keyboard to navigate can be your superpower. When filling out forms, for example, I use the keyboard almost exclusively to quickly move from one field to another and to find my state in a long drop-down list. Unless, of course, I run into another poorly coded form that is not accessible. Lucky for me, I can go back to using a mouse. But some do not have that option, and for them, our empathy should turn into empowerment and we shall demand better from our design and development practices.

For questions or to discuss how to make your next project more accessible, please contact us anytime.

More in Our Accessibility Series

Notable articles from the Accessibility category:

There’s a new acronym on the block: MACH (pronounced “mock”) architecture. 

But like X is to Twitter, MACH is more a rebrand than a reinvention. In fact, you’re probably already familiar with the M, A, C, and H and may even use them across your digital properties. While we’ve been helping our clients implement aspects of MACH architecture for years, organizations like the MACH Alliance have recently formed in an attempt to provide clearer definition around the approach, as well as to align their service offerings with the technologies at hand. 

One thing we’ve learned at Oomph after years of working with these technologies? It isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. There are many degrees of MACH adoption, and how far you go depends on your organization and its unique needs. 

But first, you need to know what MACH architecture is, why it’s great (and when it’s not), and how to get started. 

What Is MACH?

MACH is an approach to designing, building, and testing agile digital systems — particularly websites. It stands for microservices, APIs, cloud-native, and headless. 

Like a composable business, MACH unites a few tried-and-true components into a single, seamless framework for building modern digital systems. 

The components of MACH architecture are: 

  1. Microservices: Many online features and functions can be separated into more specific tasks, or microservices. Modern web apps often rely on specialized vendors to offer individual services, like sending emails, authenticating users, or completing transactions, rather than a single provider to rule them all. 
  2. APIs: Microservices interact with a website through APIs, or application programming interfaces. This allows developers to change the site’s architecture without impacting the applications that use APIs and easily offer those APIs to their customers.
  3. Cloud-Native: A cloud-based environment hosts websites and applications via the Internet, ensuring scalability and performance. Modern cloud technology like Kubernetes, containers, and virtual machines keep applications consistent while meeting the demands of your users. 
  4. Headless: Modern Javascript frameworks like Next.js and Gatsby empower intuitive front ends that can be coupled with a variety of back-end content management systems, like Drupal and WordPress. This gives administrators the authoring power they want without impacting end users’ experience. 

Are You Already MACHing? 

Even if the term MACH is new to you, chances are good that you’re already doing some version of it. Here are some telltale signs:

If you’re doing any of the above, you’re MACHing. But the magic of MACH is in bringing them all together, and there are plenty of reasons why companies are taking the leap. 

5 Benefits of MACH Architecture

If you make the transition to MACH, you can expect: 

  1. Choice: Organizations that use MACH don’t have to settle for one provider that’s “good enough” for the countless services websites need. Instead, they can choose the best vendor for the job. For example, when Oomph worked with One Percent for America to build a platform offering low-interest loans to immigrants pursuing citizenship, that meant leveraging the Salesforce CRM for loan approvals, while choosing “Click and Pledge” for donations and credit card transactions. 
  2. Flexibility: MACH architecture’s modular nature allows you to select and integrate individual components more easily and seamlessly update or replace those components.  Our client Leica, for example, was able to update its order fulfillment application with minimal impact to the rest of its Drupal site. 
  3. Performance: Headless applications often run faster and are easier to test, so you can deploy knowing you’ve created an optimal user experience. For example, we used a decoupled architecture for our client Wingspans to create a stable, flexible, and scalable site with lightning-fast performance for its audience of young career-seekers.     
  4. Security: Breaches are generally limited to individual features or components, keeping your entire system more secure. 
  5. Future-Proofing: A MACH system scales easily because each service is individually configured, making it easier to keep up with technologies and trends and avoid becoming out-of-date. 

5 Drawbacks of MACH Architecture

As beneficial as MACH architecture can be, making the switch isn’t always smooth sailing. Before deciding to adopt MACH, consider these potential pitfalls. 

  1. Complexity: With MACH architecture, you’ll have more vendors — sometimes a lot more — than if you run everything on one enterprise system. That’s more relationships to manage and more training needed for your employees, which can complicate development, testing, deployment, and overall system understanding. 
  2. Challenges With Data Parity: Following data and transactions across multiple microservices can be tricky. You may encounter synchronization issues as you get your system dialed in, which can frustrate your customers and the team maintaining your website. 
  3. Security: You read that right — security is a potential pro and a con with MACH, depending on your risk tolerance. While your whole site is less likely to go down with MACH, working with more vendors leaves you more vulnerable to breaches for specific services. 
  4. Technological Mishaps: As you explore new solutions for specific services, you’ll often start to use newer and less proven technologies. While some solutions will be a home run, you may also have a few misses. 
  5. Complicated Pricing: Instead of paying one price tag for an enterprise system, MACH means buying multiple subscriptions that can fluctuate more in price. This, coupled with the increased overhead of operating a MACH-based website, can burden your budget. 

Is MACH Architecture Right for You? 

In our experience, most brands could benefit from at least a little bit of MACH. Some of our clients are taking a MACH-lite approach with a few services or apps, while others have adopted a more comprehensive MACH architecture. 

Whether MACH is the right move for you depends on your: 

  1. Platform Size and Complexity: Smaller brands with tight budgets and simple websites may not need a full-on MACH approach. But if you’re managing content across multiple sites and apps, managing a high volume of communications and transactions, and need to iterate quickly to keep up with rapid growth, MACH is often the way to go. 
  2. Level of Security: If you’re in a highly regulated industry and need things locked down, you may be better off with a single enterprise system than a multi-vendor MACH solution.  
  3. ROI Needs: If it’s time to replace your system anyway, or you’re struggling with internal costs and the diminishing value of your current setup, it may be time to consider MACH. 
  4. Organizational Structure: If different teams are responsible for distinct business functions, MACH may be a good fit. 

How To Implement MACH Architecture

If any of the above scenarios apply to your organization, you’re probably anxious to give MACH a go. But a solid MACH architecture doesn’t happen overnight. We recommend starting with a technology audit: a systematic, data-driven review of your current system and its limitations.

We recently partnered with career platform Wingspans to modernize its website. Below is an example of the audit and the output: a seamless and responsive MACH architecture. 

The Audit

  1. Surveys/Questionnaires: We started with some simple questions about Wingspan’s website, including what was working, what wasn’t, and the team’s reasons for updating. They shared that they wanted to offer their users a more modern experience. 
  2. Stakeholder Interviews: We used insights from the surveys to spark more in-depth discussions with team members close to the website. Through conversation, we uncovered that website performance and speed were their users’ primary pain points. 
  3. Systems Access and Audit: Then, we took a peek under the hood. Wingspans had already shared its poor experiences with previous vendors and applications, so we wanted to uncover simpler ways to improve site speed and performance. 
  4. Organizational Structure: Understanding how the organization functions helps design a system to meet those needs. The Wingspans team was excited about modern technology and relatively savvy, but they also needed a system that could accommodate thousands of authenticated community members. 
  5. Marketing Plan Review: We also wanted to understand how Wingspans would talk about their website. They sought an “app-like” experience with super-fast search, which gave us insight into how their MACH system needed to function. 
  6. Roadmap: Wingspans had a rapid go-to-market timeline. We simplified our typical roadmap to meet that goal, knowing that MACH architecture would be easy to update down the road. 
  7. Delivery: We recommended Wingspans deploy as a headless site (a site we later developed for them), with documentation we could hand off to their design partner. 

The Output 

We later deployed Wingspans.com as a headless site using the following components of MACH architecture:

  1. Microservices: Wingspans leverages microservices like Algolia Search for site search, Amazon AWS for email sends and static site hosting, and Stripe for managing transactions.
  2. APIs: Wingspans.com communicates with the above microservices through simple APIs. 
  3. Cloud-Native: The new website uses cloud-computing services like Google Firebase, which supports user authentication and data storage. 
  4. Headless: Gatsby powers the front-end design, while Cosmic JS is the back-end content management system (CMS). 

Let’s Talk MACH

As MACH evolves, the conversation around it will, too. Wondering which components may revolutionize your site and which to skip (for now)? Get in touch to set up your own technology audit.