Feb. 14, 2006
Issue No.6
- More Cool Apps
- SEO Help
- Spam: Part I
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Happy Valentine's Day!
Interactive Guestbooks
The Capitol Corridor has developed a program to integrate Wi-Fi on their train cars. We built a Wi-Fi Guestbook that allows users to fill out a short form with comments that are simultaneously sent to a MySQL database and posted on the website. The application includes a spam filter for weeding out unwanted entries. The Guestbook provides a user-friendly venue for an ongoing dialog between riders and CCJPA administrators.
We created a custom "Share Your Experience" feature for Duckhorn Wine Company that lets users submit comments about specific Duckhorn wines. The submissions include an opt-in feature are recorded in a MySQL database. The site administrator then receives an automatic email notification that a new comment has been submitted, and he then reviews the comment for opt-in agreement and content appropriateness.
Please let us know if you're interested in learning more about these applications.
Write for the Web
Creating content for the web is different than copywriting or developing imagery for corporate print materials. Web audiences typically scan screen content more quickly than printed words. It's uncomfortable to read long documents on a monitor - or even worse, a laptop. Reading text online takes 25% longer than reading printed matter. Online text should be roughly 50% shorter than the amount written for print materials. Try to keep the text content on each page of your site to 500 words or less.
Write for readers who scan
Web audiences tend to scan rather than every word. Use two or three levels of headings. Make them meaningful, consistent in style, and active-voiced. For the main body of writing, use plain, concise language and put the most important information at the top of the page, adding additional detail lower down.
Use language your customers are comfortable with
Stay away from obscure abbreviations, technical jargon or internal marketing terms unfamiliar to your customers. Use plain English that's easy to understand.
Make headlines short and descriptive
Headlines often serve double duty as content headers and links to other pages. Make the first word informative and distinctive, so groups of related content can be scanned and understood easily. Make your headlines short (about four words), descriptive and closely related to the content. Avoid "teasers" and humorous headlines which are easily misinterpreted on the web. These can be misleading and make users suspect content isn't useful.
Conversion Rates
Use email campaigns and your website to convert onlookers to customers by following these tips:
Consider the source
Check your stats and know where your website visitors come from; it may be a search engine, another website, your email campaigns, banner advertisements or even a print campaign. Users from different sources make up different audience segments, resulting in different conversion ratios. Increase the share of users who come from sources that consistently show high conversion ratios. All of our customers have access to their website traffic statistics.
Know your audience
Your website delivers products, services or information to customers. Whatever you offer, you need to get and keep your audience. Segment your audience by income, gender, age, marital status or type of products they've purchased from you in the past. Market to each group differently. Understanding each segment's likes, dislikes, fears and obstacles to making a purchase will increase your conversion rates.
Make it easy to buy your product
More than half of website visitors look through only one or two pages before leaving. Put product offers and direct-to-store links on your homepage. Make prices clearly visible. Prominently display information on shipping options, moneyback guarantees and special pricing. Customers prefer buying from websites to emails, so make sure they can get purchase quickly - a single click from your email or homepage to your online store.
Provide incentives
Deciding to buy something online should be simple. "Buy today and save $10" is a compelling reason to buy now, from you - and not your competitor.
Our mission for the newsletter is to provide internet technology information that may benefit our clients. Let us know what you'd like to to see in Neekdesign News.
-- The Neekdesign Team