Showing posts with label video. Show all posts
Showing posts with label video. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
“flashy” Video Advertising
Whether you wish to promote your business, or as YouTube says “Broadcast Yourself,” video content beats text adverts hands down. First, the viewer gets to see the merits of your products and services instead of being told about them. Second, videos say more in less time so it’s more convenient to the people you want to advertise your business or yourself, too.
Obstacles to Video Advertising through the Net
There are obstacles, however, to maximizing the benefits of video content. The large file size of video content is incompatible with the typically limited bandwidth that visitors to your site have. The inability of the author to enhance visitors’ viewing experience by the use of interactive video navigation controls is also a problem. Different playback standards also present a problem. Furthermore, there is difficulty integrating other data types (text, music, graphics, and other web content) with video adverts.
Flash Videos from Adobe
It is a good thing for internet marketing professionals who wish to use video content for advertising purposes that Adobe has designed a platform for delivering seamlessly integrated and universally accessible Flash Live Video (FLV) content over the internet. By using Adobe’s video delivery options, you can easily put videos on your web site for your site’s visitors or you can readily make video emails and deliver your advertising content to your targeted clients. Adobe has also revolutionized the video sharing industry over the net.
Flash Video Delivery Platform
As the author of the video, you can easily use this platform to advertise your business or to post video for recreational and video sharing purposes over the internet. All you need to do is to create your own video with a high quality video or web camera and microphone then capture and encode it into FLV format using Flash Professional tools.
Once you have your Flash Video ready, delivery is easy. You can embed or link your FLV file in SWF for video email delivery or for integration on your web site. However, this method of internet video delivery is optimal only for very short clips, say 5 seconds of playback time. For longer videos, there will be audio and video synchronization issues.
If you have a longer video clip, and you only expect a few people to watch it, you can deliver your FLV file through progressive downloading. This is a vast improvement over sending your video file embedded into the SWF player. You just need to embed a short preview clip of the entire video. When it is clicked, the user is connected to the Flash Communications Server and the full video is downloaded. Your viewers can play the video as it is being downloaded because FLV downloading is done by segments. There’s no file size limitation and audio-video synchronization problems.
The most wonderful Flash Video delivery innovation, however, is live video streaming, where the entire video need not be downloaded so your viewers are not limited by available disk size, the video is not cached so you protect copyright of the video, you can feed viewers video as you record them to your server, and you can track traffic better using your Flash Communications Server Utilities. This is by far the fastest and most convenient means of delivering live video to the web.
Truly, with skilled video editing and producing and a reliable flash Communications server, promoting yourself, and event or your business through internet video has never been easier.
Friday, October 7, 2011
Rethinking Website Content: Content That Entertains
In case you've missed it, the Web has changed; it seems like just yesterday it was good enough to take all your brochures and advertising collaterals and convert them to digital format, add a little search engine optimization, throw-in a little PHP programming and bingo, you've got a website. And if you wanted to show how cutting edge your company was, maybe you'd add a little dash of Flash animation, or some royalty free music. Well here's a bulletin from the frontlines, that isn't going to cut-it in the new multimedia Web-business environment.
Almost daily I receive emails from people asking me to review their websites and tell them why they can't convert visitors to customers even when they are attracting significant numbers of visitors on a regular basis to their sites.
The answer is both simple and complex: simple, because these websites fail to communicate the company's message in a meaningful manner to their visitors, which means no dialog is opened, and without a dialog, no business can be done; and complex, because the implementation of the solution requires a new way of thinking about communicating with your audience using sophisticated presentation techniques that put a higher premium on creativity than they do on facts, figures and old-school direct marketing tactics.
If you are looking for a mantra to begin any new website initiative or to correct an existing website disaster: Think Audience Not Customers.
New Words For A New Web-Business Environment
In the past while I've run across three newly coined words or phrases (Communitainment, Branded Entertainment, and Snack-o-tainment) that attempt to capture the fundamental change that has taken place among Web-user expectations.
All of the new terms have two things in common: one, they require the marketer to think of website visitors as an audience and not as customers; and two, they all require the marketer to use entertainment techniques as the basis for delivering content.
Communication + Entertainment + Community
The Piper Jaffray Internet Media and Marketing research team recently released a report entitled 'The User Revolution' in which Safa Rashtchy coined the concept of 'Communitainment,' a blending of the words communication and entertainment. Rashtchy uses the term to denote the "melding of communication, community, and entertainment," as a new formula for implementing the delivery of marketing content.
The report points out that "Video ads will be the driver of the next major growth in brand advertising …" with the Web being "the leading medium at work and the second leading medium at home behind television."
For any business that thought they could conduct business as usual, this should be a wake-up call. The Web has changed: the market is no longer content to be informed, they must be seduced, and you are not going to seduce them with key-word density and biz-speak.
Contrary to popular belief you can deliver a marketing message faster, more powerfully, and with better recall using creative video presentations than you can with a page of text. Now no one is saying you shouldn't have text on your site, but your copy better be damn interesting and well written if you expect anyone to actually read it.
Meaning + Sharing + Experience
The idea of 'Communitainment' provides a conceptual framework for creating Web-video presentations that work: your business communication must convey meaning through a focused presentation that uses all the various techniques available to the savvy Web-producer; your audience must see enough value in the presentation that they are willing to contact others in their colleague-community and share it; and lastly, the delivery of the message must create a memorable entertaining experience associated with the product or service provided.
Branded Entertainment
Leta Baker writes in her 'Adobe Magazine' article 'Creative Persuasion: The Rise of Branded Entertainment' about her concept of using entertaining online video presentations as a means of effectively creating brand awareness.
What Baker is talking about is video that doesn't hit you over the head with a hard-sell sales pitch or bore you to death with meaningless platitudes, but rather presents entertaining short programs that companies can attach their brand to so viewers gain a memorable positive impression of your company. This is a long-term strategy that takes into account the reality that not every genuine prospect that comes to your website is ready to buy your product at that moment but might, when and if they remember who you are, when they are ready to buy.
There are many ways to implement this 'branded entertainment' concept and they all don't have to be completely devoid of salesmanship. The Apple iPod commercials are an example of what I would call 'branded entertainment,' even if Leta Baker would object. Unlike most commercials that people race to avoid, the iPod commercials are actually anticipated: people want to know what Apple is going to come up with next, and the result: iPod has the lion's share of the MP3 player market.
The Apple Macintosh commercials are another form of 'branded entertainment' that involves a sales pitch. Here we have an ongoing campaign with well-developed characters that the audience has gotten to know over the length of the campaign. The audience looks forward to what these characters are going to do next. This does not mean that every PC owner is going to run out and buy a Mac, but over time Apple is getting people to recognize their product as an alternative.
Because the commercials are entertaining, people are listening and waiting for the next installment of the campaign. Audiences are getting the message and that is all any good marketing campaign can achieve.
And here is the big hurdle for many small businesses: good marketing requires patience and should be aimed at opening a dialog, not just making a quick sale.
Most website sales pitches are like bad 'pick-up' lines: crude and ineffective; an audience needs to be wooed with tender loving care before you can expect to see any results. If you're not willing to invest the time and creativity in opening a dialog with your audience, you can forget about using the Internet as a marketing tool.
Snack-o-tainment: Fast Food Entertainment
The term 'Snack-o-tainment' was used by Nancy Miller in her 'Wired' magazine article 'Manifesto for a New Age" in which she equates consumption of new media to societies addiction to fast food. If the audience is addicted to entertaining media, we as marketers must feed that addiction.
It wasn't that long ago that the biggest objection to online video was it took too long to load; now we see it compared to fast food. The fact is video can deliver a meaningful message in the quickest possible way because it conveys content using the full arsenal of communication tools.
We can look to television for a blueprint of how to deliver these bite-sized morsels of corporately nutritious, entertaining, marketing manna.
The thirty-second commercial is an example of just how much memorable content can be crammed into a short period of time if a little entertaining creativity is added to the mix. And unlike television, there is no costly premium associated with time on the Internet, so content can be as long or short as the message requires.
A campaign based on this formula can come complete with plot-lines, character development, and signature music all designed to deliver your marketing message in an entertaining way that will not only get stuck in your audience's memory, but will be anticipated by that same audience. The famous 'Taster's Choice' soap opera style campaign of years ago was one of the best examples of combining entertainment with a commercial message.
Even the lowly jingle can be resurrected to provide some 'sit-up and take notice' to an otherwise mundane presentation. You would be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't know the recipe for MacDonald's Big Mac, based on their fabulously successful commercials, even though they haven't been aired in years. In fact MacDonald's current roster of commercials are so forgettable that you wonder why they haven't brought the old standby back to life.
Another bit of delicious marketing entertainment was the series of Chili's Restaurant commercials featuring various singers interpreting their 'Baby Back Ribs' jingle, which provided far more entertainment in thirty seconds than a full CD of Britney Spears. More importantly that infectious 'baby back ribs' song has become deeply rooted in the public's subconscious, and when the inevitable questions comes up, 'where are we going to eat?' that jingle starts playing in our heads. If you want to be successful, learn from what works.
Can You Afford To Wait
If your business is expanding as fast as it can with an ever-growing list of customers and continuously increasing profits, then perhaps you can afford to ignore the changes taking place, and the expectations of your audience. But if things could be better, and if you yearn to improve your Web-marketing, then you have to adjust to new ways of delivering content.
You can't let out-dated thinking get in your way. There is a difference between twenty year's experience, and one year's experience repeated twenty times. There is no point in continuing to repeat old methods that no longer work.
You know things have changed so get ready to deliver your content in a way that will allow your company to become the next great Web success story.
Almost daily I receive emails from people asking me to review their websites and tell them why they can't convert visitors to customers even when they are attracting significant numbers of visitors on a regular basis to their sites.
The answer is both simple and complex: simple, because these websites fail to communicate the company's message in a meaningful manner to their visitors, which means no dialog is opened, and without a dialog, no business can be done; and complex, because the implementation of the solution requires a new way of thinking about communicating with your audience using sophisticated presentation techniques that put a higher premium on creativity than they do on facts, figures and old-school direct marketing tactics.
If you are looking for a mantra to begin any new website initiative or to correct an existing website disaster: Think Audience Not Customers.
New Words For A New Web-Business Environment
In the past while I've run across three newly coined words or phrases (Communitainment, Branded Entertainment, and Snack-o-tainment) that attempt to capture the fundamental change that has taken place among Web-user expectations.
All of the new terms have two things in common: one, they require the marketer to think of website visitors as an audience and not as customers; and two, they all require the marketer to use entertainment techniques as the basis for delivering content.
Communication + Entertainment + Community
The Piper Jaffray Internet Media and Marketing research team recently released a report entitled 'The User Revolution' in which Safa Rashtchy coined the concept of 'Communitainment,' a blending of the words communication and entertainment. Rashtchy uses the term to denote the "melding of communication, community, and entertainment," as a new formula for implementing the delivery of marketing content.
The report points out that "Video ads will be the driver of the next major growth in brand advertising …" with the Web being "the leading medium at work and the second leading medium at home behind television."
For any business that thought they could conduct business as usual, this should be a wake-up call. The Web has changed: the market is no longer content to be informed, they must be seduced, and you are not going to seduce them with key-word density and biz-speak.
Contrary to popular belief you can deliver a marketing message faster, more powerfully, and with better recall using creative video presentations than you can with a page of text. Now no one is saying you shouldn't have text on your site, but your copy better be damn interesting and well written if you expect anyone to actually read it.
Meaning + Sharing + Experience
The idea of 'Communitainment' provides a conceptual framework for creating Web-video presentations that work: your business communication must convey meaning through a focused presentation that uses all the various techniques available to the savvy Web-producer; your audience must see enough value in the presentation that they are willing to contact others in their colleague-community and share it; and lastly, the delivery of the message must create a memorable entertaining experience associated with the product or service provided.
Branded Entertainment
Leta Baker writes in her 'Adobe Magazine' article 'Creative Persuasion: The Rise of Branded Entertainment' about her concept of using entertaining online video presentations as a means of effectively creating brand awareness.
What Baker is talking about is video that doesn't hit you over the head with a hard-sell sales pitch or bore you to death with meaningless platitudes, but rather presents entertaining short programs that companies can attach their brand to so viewers gain a memorable positive impression of your company. This is a long-term strategy that takes into account the reality that not every genuine prospect that comes to your website is ready to buy your product at that moment but might, when and if they remember who you are, when they are ready to buy.
There are many ways to implement this 'branded entertainment' concept and they all don't have to be completely devoid of salesmanship. The Apple iPod commercials are an example of what I would call 'branded entertainment,' even if Leta Baker would object. Unlike most commercials that people race to avoid, the iPod commercials are actually anticipated: people want to know what Apple is going to come up with next, and the result: iPod has the lion's share of the MP3 player market.
The Apple Macintosh commercials are another form of 'branded entertainment' that involves a sales pitch. Here we have an ongoing campaign with well-developed characters that the audience has gotten to know over the length of the campaign. The audience looks forward to what these characters are going to do next. This does not mean that every PC owner is going to run out and buy a Mac, but over time Apple is getting people to recognize their product as an alternative.
Because the commercials are entertaining, people are listening and waiting for the next installment of the campaign. Audiences are getting the message and that is all any good marketing campaign can achieve.
And here is the big hurdle for many small businesses: good marketing requires patience and should be aimed at opening a dialog, not just making a quick sale.
Most website sales pitches are like bad 'pick-up' lines: crude and ineffective; an audience needs to be wooed with tender loving care before you can expect to see any results. If you're not willing to invest the time and creativity in opening a dialog with your audience, you can forget about using the Internet as a marketing tool.
Snack-o-tainment: Fast Food Entertainment
The term 'Snack-o-tainment' was used by Nancy Miller in her 'Wired' magazine article 'Manifesto for a New Age" in which she equates consumption of new media to societies addiction to fast food. If the audience is addicted to entertaining media, we as marketers must feed that addiction.
It wasn't that long ago that the biggest objection to online video was it took too long to load; now we see it compared to fast food. The fact is video can deliver a meaningful message in the quickest possible way because it conveys content using the full arsenal of communication tools.
We can look to television for a blueprint of how to deliver these bite-sized morsels of corporately nutritious, entertaining, marketing manna.
The thirty-second commercial is an example of just how much memorable content can be crammed into a short period of time if a little entertaining creativity is added to the mix. And unlike television, there is no costly premium associated with time on the Internet, so content can be as long or short as the message requires.
A campaign based on this formula can come complete with plot-lines, character development, and signature music all designed to deliver your marketing message in an entertaining way that will not only get stuck in your audience's memory, but will be anticipated by that same audience. The famous 'Taster's Choice' soap opera style campaign of years ago was one of the best examples of combining entertainment with a commercial message.
Even the lowly jingle can be resurrected to provide some 'sit-up and take notice' to an otherwise mundane presentation. You would be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't know the recipe for MacDonald's Big Mac, based on their fabulously successful commercials, even though they haven't been aired in years. In fact MacDonald's current roster of commercials are so forgettable that you wonder why they haven't brought the old standby back to life.
Another bit of delicious marketing entertainment was the series of Chili's Restaurant commercials featuring various singers interpreting their 'Baby Back Ribs' jingle, which provided far more entertainment in thirty seconds than a full CD of Britney Spears. More importantly that infectious 'baby back ribs' song has become deeply rooted in the public's subconscious, and when the inevitable questions comes up, 'where are we going to eat?' that jingle starts playing in our heads. If you want to be successful, learn from what works.
Can You Afford To Wait
If your business is expanding as fast as it can with an ever-growing list of customers and continuously increasing profits, then perhaps you can afford to ignore the changes taking place, and the expectations of your audience. But if things could be better, and if you yearn to improve your Web-marketing, then you have to adjust to new ways of delivering content.
You can't let out-dated thinking get in your way. There is a difference between twenty year's experience, and one year's experience repeated twenty times. There is no point in continuing to repeat old methods that no longer work.
You know things have changed so get ready to deliver your content in a way that will allow your company to become the next great Web success story.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
11 Ways To Drive Traffic Away From Your Website
Why Web-Users Are So Impatient
While watching a Toronto Raptor basketball game I saw T.J. Ford, one of the fastest players in the league, rush down the court like a man possessed and proceed to throw the ball behind his back to a trailing Andrea Bargnani. The trouble was the ball sailed over the head of the seven-foot Bargnani into the second row of seats. Ford, himself, ended up with a beer and popcorn facial after landing in the lap of a front row patron. So what does this have to do with website design and marketing you ask? A lot.
As talented as Ford is a basketball player he sometimes plays out-of-control, and his major asset, his speed, becomes a liability. When this happens in a basketball game the answer is to slow the game down and get back in control.
Don' Speed-It-Up; Slow-It-Down
Website visitors are like the speedy T.J. Ford; they are so intent on getting what they want as quickly and efficiently as possible, that they often surf the Internet out-of-control.
How many times have you sat in front of the computer with your hand resting on your mouse searching for some desired product, service, or information, when all of sudden you find what looks like what you want, but before you even have a chance to discover exactly what it is, your hair-trigger finger decides it's time to move-on. It's like your finger has a mind of it's own.
Speed Kills Marketing Efforts
All the talk and discussion about short attention spans caused by people raised on video games and quick-cut-edited music videos is very misleading.
What website visitors won't tolerate are websites that waste their time, and many websites are guilty of exactly that. Contrary to popular belief, the job of a website designer, who understand marketing, is not to speed up website visitors, but to slow them down so they can absorb the marketing message.
If you want your audience to remember you, if you want to make an impression, if you want website visitors to understand why they should give you their business, then you have to slow them down long enough to absorb your message. And that message better be worth their while or they will never come back.
It isn't about how fast a page loads; it's about delivering an appropriate payoff for the wait.
Now I will admit there people who absolutely, positively will not wait more than eight seconds for anything to load. You know who you are. And I say, the hell with them. These are the same people who won't wait their turn in a brick and mortar store either, they demand to be served before everyone else - it's just not possible to satisfy these people, so why design your entire website marketing around them. They are never going to hang around long enough to grasp your message and learn why they should be giving you their business, so forget about them.
The people you should be worrying about are the ones that really want to find out more about what it is you do, and are prepared to invest a little time and effort to give you a chance to explain yourself. These are the important people; this is your real audience, and you disappoint them at your financial peril.
The Reasons Why Web-users Are Impatient
The real reason website users are so damn impatient is not that they have such short attention spans, it's because most websites are designed to meet perceived company objectives, rather than audience needs.
How To Drive Traffic Away From Your Website
Let's take a look at some of the reasons why your website visitors may be leaving your website before they've had a chance to hear what you have to say; or to put it another way, if you want to drive traffic AWAY faster than you attract it, here are some of the things you should do.
1.Give Web-visitors Too Many Options and Choices
Social scientist and Swarthmore College professor, Barry Schwartz, has coined the phrase, "the paradox of choice." His studies have concluded the more choice you give people, the less likely they are to make a decision. Some choice is good, but too much choice creates confusion: it's a case of diminishing marginal utility.
A well designed website explains, directs, guides, and focuses visitor attention on the things that are of real benefit to your visitors and to your company.
Every business provides a variety of products, services, and information to their customers, but these things are not all of equal importance. Your website is a place to focus attention on your core marketing message, not a place to provide a shopping list of everything you are able to do and every product or service you may be able to offer.
2. Give Web-visitors Too Much Information To Process
Architect, author, and information designer, Richard Saul Wurman, in his book, 'Information Anxiety' talks about, "the ever-widening gap between what we understand and what we think we should understand."
Good website design is about more than technology and aesthetics; it's about deciding what information needs to be presented and what information needs to be left out. If you are truly an expert in your field, you should know what information is important to your customers in order for them to make a decision. Too much information is like too much choice, it confuses rather clarifies. Focus on delivering meaningful content or risk having your visitors hit the exit button.
3. Give Web-visitors Too Much Non-relevant Content
The only thing worse than overloading your website with more information than visitors can absorb is confusing them with useless and non-relevant content.
Non-relevant content is content that doesn't advance your major purpose: to deliver your marketing message in an informative, engaging, entertaining, and memorable manner. If it isn't relevant, dump it.
4. Give Web-visitors Too Many Irritating Distractions
Websites should be designed to direct visitors to the information they want and that information should be the content you want to delivery.
You cannot sell someone a product or service they do not want. A real prospect is one that needs the same information you want to provide; the art of sales is directing potential clients to relevant information, and presenting it in a way that visitors see your product or service as fulfilling their needs.
On the surface, third-party advertisements and banners may seem like a good way to make some extra cash from your traffic, but these ads become so distracting, visitors either get feed-up or click on one of the links that takes them away from your site. Whatever few bucks you earn from these ads, you are loosing by chasing real customers away; this of course assumes you are a real business with something legitimate to sell and not a website that's an excuse to deliver advertisements.
Other nonsense like favorite links and silly fluff-content merely distracts visitors from investigating your site to find what they are looking for.
5. Give Web-visitors Too Many Red Flags
Website visitors are constantly looking for red flags that tell them that the site they are visiting should be skipped as soon as possible.
If you want to make sure visitors won't deal with you make sure you don't provide any contact information: no contact names, no phone numbers, and no mailing address is a sure sign that you won't look after any problems that arise from a website transaction.
Your website must be designed to build trust and foster a relationship, not scare people away.
6. Give Web-visitors Too Many Decisions To Make
How many decisions do you demand from your visitors in order for them to do business with you?
Take for example the seemingly simple task of purchasing a new television. Do you purchase the inexpensive but old tube technology, the newer Plasma technology, or the LCD technology? How about all the various features to choose from like picture-in-picture, commercial skip-timers, and on and on? All you really want to do is relax with your spouse and enjoy a good movie - is that on a VSH, DVD, Blu-ray, or HD-DVD?
7. Give Web-visitors Too Many Stumbling Blocks
Do you make people go through the order processing system before they can find out how much something costs, or do you demand potential customers read a ridiculous amount of small print legalese that only a lawyer could understand?
If you want to drive traffic away from your site make sure you build in as many stumbling blocks as possible.
8. Give Web-visitors Too Many Forms TO Fill-in
Do you attract your visitors with special offers or free white papers and then demand that they fill-out complex forms, surveys, and questionnaires before you give them access to what they came for? If you do, you are probably losing a lot of people you attracted, and you are guaranteeing that your next email promotion will end up in the trash.
9. Give Web-visitors Incomprehensible Page Layouts
Good design, proper page layout, consistent navigation, and well organized information architecture that promotes serendipity, helps visitors find what they're looking for and provides a pleasant, efficient and rewarding experience for the website visitor.
Website designs that rely on technology, databases, and search engine optimization rather than focused content, coherent organization, articulate presentation, and a memorable, rewarding experience are designs designed to chase traffic away.
10. Give Web-visitors Too Many Confusing Instructions
One of the most frustrating experiences website visitors encounter is confusing instructions and incoherent explanations of how your product or service works or how to order what you are selling.
11. Give Web-visitors Too Many Reason To Click-out
If you really are determined to fail, make sure you provide website visitors with as many reasons as possible to leave your site: irrelevant links to your favorite sites, links to your suppliers because you're too cheap to put their information on your own site, or any combination of the reasons mentioned above, all contribute to driving traffic away from your site.
While watching a Toronto Raptor basketball game I saw T.J. Ford, one of the fastest players in the league, rush down the court like a man possessed and proceed to throw the ball behind his back to a trailing Andrea Bargnani. The trouble was the ball sailed over the head of the seven-foot Bargnani into the second row of seats. Ford, himself, ended up with a beer and popcorn facial after landing in the lap of a front row patron. So what does this have to do with website design and marketing you ask? A lot.
As talented as Ford is a basketball player he sometimes plays out-of-control, and his major asset, his speed, becomes a liability. When this happens in a basketball game the answer is to slow the game down and get back in control.
Don' Speed-It-Up; Slow-It-Down
Website visitors are like the speedy T.J. Ford; they are so intent on getting what they want as quickly and efficiently as possible, that they often surf the Internet out-of-control.
How many times have you sat in front of the computer with your hand resting on your mouse searching for some desired product, service, or information, when all of sudden you find what looks like what you want, but before you even have a chance to discover exactly what it is, your hair-trigger finger decides it's time to move-on. It's like your finger has a mind of it's own.
Speed Kills Marketing Efforts
All the talk and discussion about short attention spans caused by people raised on video games and quick-cut-edited music videos is very misleading.
What website visitors won't tolerate are websites that waste their time, and many websites are guilty of exactly that. Contrary to popular belief, the job of a website designer, who understand marketing, is not to speed up website visitors, but to slow them down so they can absorb the marketing message.
If you want your audience to remember you, if you want to make an impression, if you want website visitors to understand why they should give you their business, then you have to slow them down long enough to absorb your message. And that message better be worth their while or they will never come back.
It isn't about how fast a page loads; it's about delivering an appropriate payoff for the wait.
Now I will admit there people who absolutely, positively will not wait more than eight seconds for anything to load. You know who you are. And I say, the hell with them. These are the same people who won't wait their turn in a brick and mortar store either, they demand to be served before everyone else - it's just not possible to satisfy these people, so why design your entire website marketing around them. They are never going to hang around long enough to grasp your message and learn why they should be giving you their business, so forget about them.
The people you should be worrying about are the ones that really want to find out more about what it is you do, and are prepared to invest a little time and effort to give you a chance to explain yourself. These are the important people; this is your real audience, and you disappoint them at your financial peril.
The Reasons Why Web-users Are Impatient
The real reason website users are so damn impatient is not that they have such short attention spans, it's because most websites are designed to meet perceived company objectives, rather than audience needs.
How To Drive Traffic Away From Your Website
Let's take a look at some of the reasons why your website visitors may be leaving your website before they've had a chance to hear what you have to say; or to put it another way, if you want to drive traffic AWAY faster than you attract it, here are some of the things you should do.
1.Give Web-visitors Too Many Options and Choices
Social scientist and Swarthmore College professor, Barry Schwartz, has coined the phrase, "the paradox of choice." His studies have concluded the more choice you give people, the less likely they are to make a decision. Some choice is good, but too much choice creates confusion: it's a case of diminishing marginal utility.
A well designed website explains, directs, guides, and focuses visitor attention on the things that are of real benefit to your visitors and to your company.
Every business provides a variety of products, services, and information to their customers, but these things are not all of equal importance. Your website is a place to focus attention on your core marketing message, not a place to provide a shopping list of everything you are able to do and every product or service you may be able to offer.
2. Give Web-visitors Too Much Information To Process
Architect, author, and information designer, Richard Saul Wurman, in his book, 'Information Anxiety' talks about, "the ever-widening gap between what we understand and what we think we should understand."
Good website design is about more than technology and aesthetics; it's about deciding what information needs to be presented and what information needs to be left out. If you are truly an expert in your field, you should know what information is important to your customers in order for them to make a decision. Too much information is like too much choice, it confuses rather clarifies. Focus on delivering meaningful content or risk having your visitors hit the exit button.
3. Give Web-visitors Too Much Non-relevant Content
The only thing worse than overloading your website with more information than visitors can absorb is confusing them with useless and non-relevant content.
Non-relevant content is content that doesn't advance your major purpose: to deliver your marketing message in an informative, engaging, entertaining, and memorable manner. If it isn't relevant, dump it.
4. Give Web-visitors Too Many Irritating Distractions
Websites should be designed to direct visitors to the information they want and that information should be the content you want to delivery.
You cannot sell someone a product or service they do not want. A real prospect is one that needs the same information you want to provide; the art of sales is directing potential clients to relevant information, and presenting it in a way that visitors see your product or service as fulfilling their needs.
On the surface, third-party advertisements and banners may seem like a good way to make some extra cash from your traffic, but these ads become so distracting, visitors either get feed-up or click on one of the links that takes them away from your site. Whatever few bucks you earn from these ads, you are loosing by chasing real customers away; this of course assumes you are a real business with something legitimate to sell and not a website that's an excuse to deliver advertisements.
Other nonsense like favorite links and silly fluff-content merely distracts visitors from investigating your site to find what they are looking for.
5. Give Web-visitors Too Many Red Flags
Website visitors are constantly looking for red flags that tell them that the site they are visiting should be skipped as soon as possible.
If you want to make sure visitors won't deal with you make sure you don't provide any contact information: no contact names, no phone numbers, and no mailing address is a sure sign that you won't look after any problems that arise from a website transaction.
Your website must be designed to build trust and foster a relationship, not scare people away.
6. Give Web-visitors Too Many Decisions To Make
How many decisions do you demand from your visitors in order for them to do business with you?
Take for example the seemingly simple task of purchasing a new television. Do you purchase the inexpensive but old tube technology, the newer Plasma technology, or the LCD technology? How about all the various features to choose from like picture-in-picture, commercial skip-timers, and on and on? All you really want to do is relax with your spouse and enjoy a good movie - is that on a VSH, DVD, Blu-ray, or HD-DVD?
7. Give Web-visitors Too Many Stumbling Blocks
Do you make people go through the order processing system before they can find out how much something costs, or do you demand potential customers read a ridiculous amount of small print legalese that only a lawyer could understand?
If you want to drive traffic away from your site make sure you build in as many stumbling blocks as possible.
8. Give Web-visitors Too Many Forms TO Fill-in
Do you attract your visitors with special offers or free white papers and then demand that they fill-out complex forms, surveys, and questionnaires before you give them access to what they came for? If you do, you are probably losing a lot of people you attracted, and you are guaranteeing that your next email promotion will end up in the trash.
9. Give Web-visitors Incomprehensible Page Layouts
Good design, proper page layout, consistent navigation, and well organized information architecture that promotes serendipity, helps visitors find what they're looking for and provides a pleasant, efficient and rewarding experience for the website visitor.
Website designs that rely on technology, databases, and search engine optimization rather than focused content, coherent organization, articulate presentation, and a memorable, rewarding experience are designs designed to chase traffic away.
10. Give Web-visitors Too Many Confusing Instructions
One of the most frustrating experiences website visitors encounter is confusing instructions and incoherent explanations of how your product or service works or how to order what you are selling.
11. Give Web-visitors Too Many Reason To Click-out
If you really are determined to fail, make sure you provide website visitors with as many reasons as possible to leave your site: irrelevant links to your favorite sites, links to your suppliers because you're too cheap to put their information on your own site, or any combination of the reasons mentioned above, all contribute to driving traffic away from your site.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Using Video To Draw Business On The Web
It has been proven in the United States that there are more broadband internet users compared to dial-up. That being the case, media that requires high bandwidth is now more readily available to anyone who wants to download it.
A medium that is still relatively new is using video presentations to market your products and services. While photos do provide a potential customer a view of the product or service at hand, video commands much more attention. It delivers a multimedia experience to the viewer that demands attention. Also, the power of a moving image with audio over plain text is indisputable.
However, certain things are appropriate for video while others are not.
A very good use of video on the internet would be to sell real estate. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but you can’t exactly walk through a house via photos alone. Video will allow the potential home buyer to tour the home before they visit to pique interest. A use of video that would not work would be something that would not help sell the product at all. For example, if you were selling paint, using video would not enhance a paint’s color or texture. A photo would be much more appropriate.
If you are selling a product on the internet, explore ways to use video to show off your product or show people how to do things with your product. Encoding the video into Flash will make the video easily viewed by almost everybody online. It is important, though, that you pay attention to the quality of the production. While the video has a lot of power, it can work against you if the video looks amateur.
In the very near future, internet and television will not have any separation. As of now, major providers of services are offering plans that physically deliver television through the internet. This is an untapped medium for advertising that is sure to be a big hit.
A medium that is still relatively new is using video presentations to market your products and services. While photos do provide a potential customer a view of the product or service at hand, video commands much more attention. It delivers a multimedia experience to the viewer that demands attention. Also, the power of a moving image with audio over plain text is indisputable.
However, certain things are appropriate for video while others are not.
A very good use of video on the internet would be to sell real estate. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but you can’t exactly walk through a house via photos alone. Video will allow the potential home buyer to tour the home before they visit to pique interest. A use of video that would not work would be something that would not help sell the product at all. For example, if you were selling paint, using video would not enhance a paint’s color or texture. A photo would be much more appropriate.
If you are selling a product on the internet, explore ways to use video to show off your product or show people how to do things with your product. Encoding the video into Flash will make the video easily viewed by almost everybody online. It is important, though, that you pay attention to the quality of the production. While the video has a lot of power, it can work against you if the video looks amateur.
In the very near future, internet and television will not have any separation. As of now, major providers of services are offering plans that physically deliver television through the internet. This is an untapped medium for advertising that is sure to be a big hit.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Will Video Ever Replace Text?
A lot of marketing gurus have been touting online video as the way of the future.
They extol video as a replacement to boring and static text.
While I have to admit that I really like using online videos for promote my websites, I think that replacing all your text with video is silly. There are a lot of times when I’d much rather read an article or a manual than watch a video.
Also, when I’m reading a book or the newspaper, I can highlight anything I think is particularly important, and I can rip out just the pages that I think are relevant to me.
Also, you can skim an entire book and have a pretty good idea what it’s about. Skimming a video just doesn’t work as well.
Then there’s the fact that you can read anywhere. If you’re sitting flying in an airplane, you can read a book the entire time. You can’t watch a video the entire time. Watching video also requires technology like DVD players or laptops which requires batteries or a plug. When you’re reading all your need is light.
One application where I like video is when it’s accompanied by an article, not the replacement for it. For example, when I record videos and put them on my blog, I always try to include a text version for what I’m saying in my videos so that if a visitor doesn’t want to watch my videos or can’t, then they can still get the gist of what I’m saying by reading the accompanying text.
When you’re using videos as a marketing technique, one thing you need to be aware of is that not everyone has broadband. If your target market only includes broadband users, then fine, but if some of your customers are on dialup, then make sure you supplement with text.
So while video may very well be the way of the future, it’s never going to completely replace text, nor should it.
They extol video as a replacement to boring and static text.
While I have to admit that I really like using online videos for promote my websites, I think that replacing all your text with video is silly. There are a lot of times when I’d much rather read an article or a manual than watch a video.
Also, when I’m reading a book or the newspaper, I can highlight anything I think is particularly important, and I can rip out just the pages that I think are relevant to me.
Also, you can skim an entire book and have a pretty good idea what it’s about. Skimming a video just doesn’t work as well.
Then there’s the fact that you can read anywhere. If you’re sitting flying in an airplane, you can read a book the entire time. You can’t watch a video the entire time. Watching video also requires technology like DVD players or laptops which requires batteries or a plug. When you’re reading all your need is light.
One application where I like video is when it’s accompanied by an article, not the replacement for it. For example, when I record videos and put them on my blog, I always try to include a text version for what I’m saying in my videos so that if a visitor doesn’t want to watch my videos or can’t, then they can still get the gist of what I’m saying by reading the accompanying text.
When you’re using videos as a marketing technique, one thing you need to be aware of is that not everyone has broadband. If your target market only includes broadband users, then fine, but if some of your customers are on dialup, then make sure you supplement with text.
So while video may very well be the way of the future, it’s never going to completely replace text, nor should it.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
How to find and use file-hosting
What’s the difference?
While surfing the net in order to find free space for home video or favorite songs, users often confuse two things - web hosting and file hosting. So, what’s the difference? First of all, web hosting allows you to place your site on the web. And file hosting gives you free space, where you may store whatever you want - from files to songs. So, now you can save your time looking for file hosting instead of web hosting.
Keywords
First of all you must define why you need file hosting? Basically, there are 4 common types of files - video, images, music and data. If you are looking for any special file hosting server, you should use the keywords “file upload” and add the type of file. For example “file video upload”. Another good way is to type in SE “file hosting”. The best SE in my humble opinion are Google and Yahoo! So, start your search and I’ll tell you how to deal with file-hosting services.
How to use it?
Usually, file hosting services offer you to choose a file from your hard drive. As I’ve already said, you may choose mp3, video or any data you want. But keep in mind that the file must conform to upload restrictions. The upload limit may vary from 10 to 250 Mb.
And this is not the only restriction. There may be upload and download speed limits, free space limits, and so on. But all these restrictions can be lifted if you sign up for “premium account”. So it’s up to you.
After uploading a file you get a link that you can keep in the closet or share. Using this link you can download files whenever you want.
There is no doubt that file hosting service is the most reliable and easy way to share and host your files.
While surfing the net in order to find free space for home video or favorite songs, users often confuse two things - web hosting and file hosting. So, what’s the difference? First of all, web hosting allows you to place your site on the web. And file hosting gives you free space, where you may store whatever you want - from files to songs. So, now you can save your time looking for file hosting instead of web hosting.
Keywords
First of all you must define why you need file hosting? Basically, there are 4 common types of files - video, images, music and data. If you are looking for any special file hosting server, you should use the keywords “file upload” and add the type of file. For example “file video upload”. Another good way is to type in SE “file hosting”. The best SE in my humble opinion are Google and Yahoo! So, start your search and I’ll tell you how to deal with file-hosting services.
How to use it?
Usually, file hosting services offer you to choose a file from your hard drive. As I’ve already said, you may choose mp3, video or any data you want. But keep in mind that the file must conform to upload restrictions. The upload limit may vary from 10 to 250 Mb.
And this is not the only restriction. There may be upload and download speed limits, free space limits, and so on. But all these restrictions can be lifted if you sign up for “premium account”. So it’s up to you.
After uploading a file you get a link that you can keep in the closet or share. Using this link you can download files whenever you want.
There is no doubt that file hosting service is the most reliable and easy way to share and host your files.
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