Provide Information
Give users a reason to visit your
website by providing them with information and/or
entertainment. Unlike advertising in a magazine or TV
commercial where the reader or viewer is exposed to your
advertisements because they happen to be reading an
article or watching a TV show, users of the WWW must
choose to visit your website first. Therefore if your
website offers nothing more than a one page advertisement
the amount of traffic that you will generate will be
extremely limited to those individuals seeking to
purchase your product. However, by providing users with
industry information or tips you can increase your
advertising base to not only reach those interested in
your product but also to those that are casually surfing
the web in search of information related to your product
or industry.
Graphics
While graphics are important in
capturing and retaining the attention of users, they
should not be overdone. Since time is money and this is
especially true on the WWW, users don't want to be
burdened with long downloads associated with large
graphic files. Most users would rather move on then wait
for these files to download. If you are really concerned
about graphical presentation remember that half the users
of the WWW do not view the web graphically, either due to
the fact that they don't have a graphical browser or
because they don't have their graphic viewer turned on.
Also since users have already made the decision to visit
your website, it is not necessary to recatch their
attention all over again with eye-catching graphics. At
this point more emphasis should be placed on the content
and the message you wish to convey. While the power of
well designed graphics can not be denied, the
cost/benefit should be analyzed more carefully on the
Internet then in other forms of advertising.
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Navigation
& Hyperlinks
When designing a web site it is
important to make it user friendly. Nothing is more
frustrating than entering a website that has thousands of
hyperlinks with no clear direction or design. In most
instances each page should have no more than 5
hyperlinks. As is the case with any blanket statement
there are exceptions, such as sites in which large
volumes of data or topics are stored. However, in these
cases a search database should be established to aid
users in locating information rather than providing a
hyperlink for every keyword or bit of information. By
providing too many hyperlinks it becomes harder to
control what information you want your user to leave your
website with. Additionally, hyperlinks should be
strategically placed. Don't place a hyperlink in the
middle of sentence in which you are trying to make a
point. If there is information that you definitely want
users to view before they leave, try using buttons as
hyperlinks to this information. Nothing begs out more to
explore than a well designed and placed button on a
website.
Become a Resource
We briefly discussed this topic
above when talking about providing users with information
or entertainment on your website. One advantage to using
this marketing strategy is that it allows you the
flexibility to advertise in some newsgroups or other
bulletin boards without sounding like an advertisement;
which by the way is usually frowned upon. By posting that
your web site has information or entertainment that might
be useful to readers of that newsgroup, you are offering
something instead of interrupting the group with a
blatant advertisement. Continuing with the example above
a winery may wish to post a message in a newsgroup
related to wine discussions, that their website contains
information on wine selections and/or related
information.
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TerMark Enterprises