Call 01256 334567
making sense of design, web and marketing
We noted in November that we hadn’t got it right with V.7 of our web site (created in 2004) - hence V.8 on it’s way.
This great article at Marketing Experiments has some advice on how to get it right.
"It is likely that 80% of your visitors are hoping to achieve one of two
or three things on your site. Figure out what these two or three things
are, and give them plenty of space. As for the 20% you won’t please,
don’t stress about it. Please 80% is pretty good."
My Previous post outlined how to drive traffic and mentioned a point about relevant copy.
This study at iMedia (directed by WebMetricsGuru) covers a study on a sales page for copy.
What is shows is that - more is more
| Short vs. Long Copy Test | ||
| Metric | Short Copy | Longer Copy |
| Unique Visits | 2,478 | 2,348 |
| Paid Orders | 36 | 65 |
| Increase in Orders | 1.45% | 2.73% |
Another tool at Sitening that we occasionally use states: "Having at least 300 words of original content per page enables search engines to better understand your page, and increases the chances of someone finding your page."
The key words in that sentence (in our opinion) being "original content"
A link from Threadwatch pointed me to this set of latest figures for search engine usage at John Battelle.
“Year-over-year, Google and Ask showed strong search query gain of
29.4% and 27.9%, respectively, while the other search providers in the
top five declined. On a sequential basis, Google and Ask also showed
the highest growth at 8.3% and 14.6% respectively.”
A lot of talk about web 2.0 at the moment. In this article, the BBC argue the case.
Michael Arrington, author of the Web 2.0 blog
TechCrunch, sees it as the "inevitable evolution of the web from a
read-mostly medium to a read-write, or two-way medium".
Whether we like it or not, believe in the new phrase, or not: The Web is definitely changing. At The Escape, we have seen a massive shift in the past year or so of developments in creating better web sites from a client-perspective. Not just prettiness - but delivery as a marketing tool.
We are creating great new products that we utilise on a different scale, including our click logger (Firefox required) and our (licenced) stats package.
The more we know, the more we can learn!
"For those who may not be familiar with the technique, article marketing
involves submitting short articles to directories such as Ezine Articles,
with permission for others to republish your work on their blog,
website or in their email newsletter. In return, you get one or more
links back to the site of your choice."
A great post here by Brian Clark over at Copy Blogger - my new favourite blog. Only found it a couple of days ago so still trawling through all the great ideas. Why not go for a visit?
SILICON VALLEY REPORTS - Google’s mysterious methods for ranking Web sites came under attack in a lawsuit accusing the online search engine leader of ruining
scores of Internet businesses that have been wrongfully banished from
its index.
The civil complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose by
KinderStart.com, seeks to be certified as a class action representing
the owners of all Web sites blacklisted by Google’s Internet-leading
search engine since January 2001.
KinderStart, a Norwalk-based Web site devoted to information about
children, says it was dropped from Google’s index a year ago without
warning.
Craig Killick Comments: Google has made a lot of small businesses become very successful and yes it does have a lot of power now. However, I would have thought if anyone had a business that relied on the internet for business, and especially the search engines, I would employ a programme of Best Practice for my web site. I would concentrate my budget on making my web site great as I could seeing as it is such a big part of the business model.
Not the be all and end all but a quick look shows you that we can’t even validate the website for standards compliance. This would be our number one rule.
It also goes back to the point that companies seem willing to spend lots of money on things like Adwords, without concentrating on building better web sites.
Yes, I am on a soap box, but’s it’s only cause I care - sometimes the simplest things make all the difference and can save your business thousands!
Great little idea here for Natan Jewelry Shop as pointed out for me by AdvertisingForPeanuts.
These transparent stickers were placed on women’s bathroom mirrors in all the well-to-do destinations in Sao Paulo
The Escape web site has seen quite a few incarnations. The thing is with web sites; fashions change, the way we use the web has changed - we need to make sure our sites change accordingly. We also learn more and more about the way people use the web:
As we develop our understanding at The Escape, V.8 of our own web site has appeared to answer the new questions we face as a business with a web site. Luckily we have the in-house resource to do these things, unluckily we also have more important paying work. But after months of testing, we have the design in place (see the screen shot above). A little bit of Keith and Gaz magic and we should be ready to rock and roll in the next month or so.
It used to be that you’d start with the design of the web site, ie. the way it looks. That has now changed inasmuch as the design you see here has already had two months worth of research before we even began to design. I don’t expect you to be as excited as me - but I think my head might just explode!
Keith Clark pointed me to this interesting article about Eye Tracking. Where to place menus, advertising; how many words to place in a paragraph, etc.
Find out the latest Subscribe by RSS | Theme by The Escape