Orient Your First-time Web Site Visitor
|
|
Imagine spinning someone around so profoundly and for so long that when you finally tell them to open their eyes, they ask "Where am I?" not knowing if they are even on the same continent they started from. When someone comes to your web site from a search engine or through a link from another site, it's like that for them. They may have little or no context within which to understand your home page - or another page deep within your site that they've landed on.
By imagining and engineering your site for that profoundly disoriented visitor, you can add subtle clues and explicit messages to your site that orient the person arriving at your site from who knows where. You can do this without "dumbing down" your presentation in any way, turning confused visitors into converted ones.
For instance, while judging sites for the Webby Awards, I've sometimes found myself at a home page about a city that appears justifiably proud of itself for all that it's achieved, yet I haven't a clue what state or province or even what country that city is located in. It's easier to appreciate what you're reading if you know that Kamloops is in British Columbia, Canada and not in Scotland or New Zealand.
Likewise, when people are searching for a service provider and you do what you do only in a specific geographical area, say so right on your home page. For instance, if you provide emergency on-site technical support throughout Southern Vermont, say so. You'll have fewer potential clients clicking away in confusion and have fewer inappropriate phone or email inquiries to deal with.
Sometimes the missing orientation pertains to your profession rather than geography. For instance, I was once sent to look at a site on "Japanese candlestick trading" and found myself completely mystified. After reading a few paragraphs, I gathered that this had something to do with investing in the stock market, but even after I'd read the whole page I didn't know what it had to do with Japan or with candlesticks. How much nicer to include a sentence like this not far into the home page: "Since its origin in 14th century Japan, this method of stock trading according to candlestick-shaped patterns of price shifts on a graph has..."
Another time I evaluated a site for a firm that did "information protection" and "intellectual asset management." Even after reading the entire site, I wasn't sure what kinds of information or intellectual assets the firm protected and managed. I checked with the head of the firm, and my top two guesses were wrong. In fact, the firm helps companies protect trade secrets, confidential company information and intellectual property from theft or inadvertent exposure. Again, be specific and clear so that you let first-time visitors understand whether you offer the expertise or product line that they're looking for.
These three site components help you provide clues to first-time visitors to your site: the page title - the text that appears in the top left corner of the browser; the site's name and tag line, which normally appear as unifying elements on every page; and the wording or text that appears on the home page or other page. Explicitly or through the accumulation of strong clues, make sure that someone coming to your site without any advance warning of what you do will feel oriented within their first 20 or 30 seconds.
Marcia Yudkin is the author of Web Site Marketing Makeover and 10 other books. A four-time Webby Awards judge and internationally famous marketing consultant, she critiques web sites and performs web site makeovers for clients. Learn more about her detailed critique sessions on five different kinds of web sites at http://www.yudkin.com/websitequiz.htm .
|
|
|
Created & Maintained by Empower! CMS Web Sites
Host2Sell Web Hosting | Emarketing Workshops | Site SEO Review | FREE NewsletterWhen Good Computers Go Bad
Remember the day that you got your new computer (or the hand-me down from Uncle Larry) and you pulled that shiny case out of the box? Once you finally had all of the cables properly mangled into anunmanageable ball, you powered on, the screen lit up and off you went. The PC was fast, programs loaded in the blink of an eye, and Internet surfing was a breeze. Those were the days.But now your PC seems to need a walker and a dozen car batteries just to get enough energy to start. Now you can turn the PC on, go get some coffee, walk the dog, and wave hello to your local wastemanagement person who is throwing your trash cans around like a toy. When you come back inside, if the computer is ready to go, you're surprised. Then, once you click on something, the wait starts again.So what ...(related: Web Design)
Your Website Visitors - Will They Stay?
I'm sure you've all heard the saying 'Build it and they will come'. Although that may have been true a few years ago, now we must work, and work hard, to get visitors to our websites.You can't always control who visits, however, you can have some control over who stays.Here are a few website no-no's that I have come accross that made me leave without even clicking past the first page.1. Slow loading pages - For those of us still on dial-up internet access this is one of the primary reasons for not hanging around.If you think you are going to load your page up with lots of images and javascripts to make it look nice and do great things, think again. They slow down the loading of the pa...(related: Web Design)
Web Copywriting: The Psychology Of Scarcity, Less Is More If You Want Faster Sales
Countdown to Armageddon - at least you'd think so judging from some of the garish copy and blaring headlines screaming at you from so many websites.At the opposite extreme though, you've some sites which don't even have a single decent headline anywhere that captures visitors attention, let alone leads them into captivating copywriting ...(related: Web Design)
Optimized Web Page Template
I want to give you a free web page template that will besearch engine friendly. Why?Well, I assume you want your web page to come up as hig...(related: Web Design)
Build Web Pages From The Top Left Corner Down
There are two important reasons to build your website from the top left hand corner down.The first one is that this is the way people (at least in the western world) read pages. They tend to begin at the top and read towards the bottom. And they tend to look at the left column before they look at the right. This is why your web...(related: Web Design)
How To Use Sliced Graphics To Layout Your Web Site
The problem with designing your site as a graphic, is thatit would take too long to load. Your visitors would leaveyour site immediately and move to your competitors website. How can you resolve this?Slicing graphics into a number of sections, then puttingthem together in tables is a great way to layout your website. It cuts down on the time for providing a quick designfor a potential client. It also allows you to bringelements of your site together that would be difficult todo with tables.The value of slicing gra...(related: Web Design)
How Not To Be Ripped Off By Your Website Designer
As web designer my self, I have had the unfortunate luck of speaking to too many of my clients who have been ripped off by a web designer somewhere along the line. Whether it be that the designer never really finished the website, took the deposit and was never heard from again, or finished the website with less than promised quality.No business, especially a small bus...(related: Web Design)
7 Benefits Of Html Validation
You may not bother with html validation or writing simpleand clean code when designing your web site. Later you mayfind your site is slow loading, appears incorrectly in themain browsers and does not rank well for the major searchengines.Now there are sites that still do rank well even though thehtml code has many errors. This is because most of thecurrent major browsers are still very forgiving of htmlmistakes, however future browsers will become more htmlcompliant as the Internet ad...(related: Web Design)
Creating Quality Websites
Websites, there are literally billions of them out there in cyber-space. How many of them do you go to and just think this is boring, bland, or hard to use? It seems like too many to mention. So what makes a good website? I reckon it's about interaction. You've got to make the visitor interested. You've got to grab th...(related: Web Design)
Website Savvy: 10 Key Steps To Turn Your Customers On!
"How to turn "slightly interested" customers into "I've got to have it!" customers!"I am truly amazed as to the lack of information websites contain. You would think that a business would realize that a potential customer would at least like to know how to contact the customer service department. But, you'd be astonished at how many times I've actually come across NO information on the business except "place your order here". That truly leaves the customer with a feeling of abandonment. Since I visit so many websites through...(related: Web Design)
Power Of Squeeze Pages For Realtors
Squeeze pages are a very hot topic in the internet marketing scene. What a squeeze page is is a page that is built to get ...(related: Web Design)
Reach Out To Billions
Have you heard of 'Babel Fish'?It's a service provided by Alta Vista search engine people to translate every page you put 'Babel Fish' code, and up comes a a new language.Your page may be written in English, but people across Spain and Latin America can translate your web page in...(related: Web Design)
Do-it-yourself Web Design For Home-based Businesses
Home-based businesses need a strong web presence to combat the inflated advertising and marketing budgets of their larger competitors, but establishing that presence through a professionally designed and developed web site may not be an affordable option. In many cases, the only cost-effective way to get the web site you want for your business is to do it yourself.Even if you are not experienced in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), you can find helpful programs which will assist you in your design efforts. Trust me, it is not as difficult...(related: Web Design)
site-map - Copyright © 2006 Empower! Web Design | All Rights Reserved. | Web Design