5 web site designs that rock

I'm a web design minimalist. Less is more on Home pages, as these 5 demonstrate.

www.web2mobile.ca













www.apple.com













www.sethgodin.com













www.diyseo.com













www.twitter.com














TAKEAWAY FOR SMALL BUSINESS:

S.I.M.P.L.E.


YOUR TURN:

Any you want to add?

My new favourite web site

www.customink.com. In particular, I like the "lab", where you can design custom apparel.

I found them through a Google search, and loved them right away. I'm making some custom t-shirts and the site is terrific. Here's why:

1. Everything you need is right in front of you. Through the clever use of tabs and icons that serve as link buttons, you never need to navigate away from the page - always keeping your t-shirt design right in front of you.
2. It's clean, but not bland. That's a significant accomplishment.
3. All the functions are obvious. If you find yourself asking "I wonder if I can...", the answer usually presents itself to you before you finish the thought. Terrific user experience.
4. You get exactly what you want. Promotional gear, exactly how you want it. And you can order 1 if you want.
   
5. They use words that everyday people use in everyday conversation, like "talk to a real person" and "super rush delivery". It's just nice to see a site that doesn't pretend to talk down to you.
6. Great main navigation: Home | Products | Ideas | Lab. That's it. Simpler is better.
7. OK, this next one isn't related to the site design at all, but it has to go on the list. Sorry. Their tag line is "You think it. We ink it." Does it get any better than that for the product they have? Genius.

(WEB DESIGN) LESSONS FOR SMALL BUSINESS

• Simple is good
• Clean is good
• Tabs and buttons that keep you on a page as opposed to links that open new pages are great for enhancing the experience. You don't want people to get lost on your site. The "lab" on this site looks (to the user) like one page, yet you can do all kinds of things.
• Put yourself in the customer's shoes, and imagine they are considering or buying your product in person. What would they want to see and do? Take that, and replicate it on your site to the greatest extent possible.
• Use words and phrases that people actually use when they talk.

YOUR TURN:

What are you favourite sites from a design / user experience perspective?

The top 2 rules for advertising

Rule #1: Advertise where your customers shop

Rule #2: Make that ad stand out from all the other ads

Rolex puts both rules into play with this clever ad on pgatour.com










See what they did there? They advertised on pgatour.com, since (presumably) male golfers are their target audience. And to stand out from the other online ads on the site, they did three things. First, the hands of the watch move in real time (take my word for it). Second, the ad shows the time zone you're in and compares it to the time zone of the tournament you're watching. Third, their ad showed up when I clicked on tee times. Get it?

It's a very atypical ad, in a good way. Noticeable. Clever. Well done Rolex.


LESSONS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES:

Well, to reiterate:

1. Advertise where your customers shop
2. Advertise cleverly; creatively

Social Media "Experts" and pizza delivery drivers - the similarities

Social Media Expert. Sounds good, doesn't it?

If I had a nickel for every Social Media Expert I came across, this blog post would be about how close I came to an ace back on 16.

"Expert" is a term used very loosely, which intrigues me.

To me, an expert is someone with unique, specialized knowledge that is practically inaccessible to the average person.

Neurosurgeons. Laser Scientists. Nuclear Chemists. Those are experts.

Dominos Pizza, I noticed, is referring to themselves as "Pizza Delivery Experts". Really? Is it especially difficult to acquire the knowledge needed to put a pizza in a car and find an address?

Though not to the same extent, I feel the same way about "Social Media Experts". It is not especially difficult to acquire the knowledge needed to participate in online conversations. The difference between simply doing it and doing it well is noticeable. But the point is, with a little effort and dedication, anyone can do it. Some will be better than others because they possess that charisma and appeal (yes, it's evident even online) that makes them popular and respected. Others will be successful because they engage in the online experience more frequently, and for longer periods of time. But all that being said, there's no reason to think that everyday people can't discover the keys to social networking prominence.

I call myself an Advisor. I have advice that I can offer to people and organizations less inclined to make the effort that I have made. If I do my job well, I will share with them all the techniques I have come to embrace in a manner that inspires them to participate in the movement.

My good friend @HiDavidHicks has a blog called hibasme, which is an acronym for How I Became A Social Media Enthusiast. I like that.

I also like that Subway Restaurants now refers to their minimum-wage, behind-the-counter staff as "Sandwich Artists" rather than "Sandwich Experts".

TAKEAWAY FOR YOU:

• You will come across many Social Media Experts. Some much better than others. The best you can do is determine for yourself what you want to take from them, then have them convince you they can do that.
• The next best thing you can do is try it for yourself. If you have the inclination and the (ever-elusive) time, set up some profiles/accounts/pages and play around. Listen. Engage. Take notice of what you like and apply that to your business.
• Finally, in your own company, be careful about labeling yourself as something that you aren't. Your customers will notice and you will lose valuable credibility and brand respect.

Always interested in opinion... especially from Experts!

To create a good home page... don't do this.

Every once in a while, a web site home page catches my attention, for the wrong reasons.

In this case, the London Health Sciences Centre.

Newspaper people use the term "above the fold" - the top half of the front page - to describe the most important portion of the paper. That term has carried over into internet vernacular, and appropriately so. The information on your home page that fits into the browser's screen (without scrolling down) is the most important portion of your entire site. LHSC has used that prime real estate for... the colour brown. What do we, the browsers, gain from looking at the colour brown? That's right. Nothing.

I took a screen shot of this home page a week ago or so, so I figured I should revisit the site to see if they had changed it since. Much to my surprise, they made the SAME critical error with their updated home page!

TAKEAWAY FOR YOU:

• What does your home page say "above the fold"? More importantly, is it useful to the browser? And a photo of your building and the number of years you have been in business is NOT useful to anyone. Nice try.
  
• Use this space to tell the browser why they should spend any time on this site.
  
• Tell them why they should do business with you.
• Tell them how they will benefit from using your product.
• Tell them something!

YOUR TURN:

What are your favourite home pages?

It has started: the death of web sites as we know them!

Check out this online ad for Heineken Light

















Notice anything odd?

1) Prominence of Facebook link
2) ABSENCE of any Heineken brand web address

Not even the slightest reference to www.heineken.com.

This is not the only example I've seen lately. Many brands are using Facebook as their landing page for ad campaigns. And it's not limited to online campaigns - I'm noticing this development on TV too.

Wow.

The power of Facebook.


TAKEAWAY FOR YOU:

Get a Facebook page... NOW! If you have one already, use it more!

Creativity counts - just look at this Mac ad

In my marketing seminars and engagements I preach the importance of creativity. Marketing ideas, and in particular advertising ideas, need to stand out and make you notice. They need memory glue. They need to be different.

There are lots of examples that work, and this Mac ad is a recent example.















Most online ads take up one location on a web page. Most have some kind of animation. Mac took it one step further by buying TWO prime locations on the page, but then also integrating the ads so they work together.

In this ad, PC leaves the right-hand, vertical spot to participate in what's going on in the horizontal spot, while Mac watches (I'd show it to you, but the ad rotates so if I sent you a link, you might not see it).

Genius.

That creative thinking about how to make people notice really works.

Most ads are noise. This ad is memorable.

And that's the whole point: how can you think creatively about how you advertise or market your brand that makes it truly stand out from the noise?

Think Diamond Shreddies

Think Bic razor billboards (click to view).


THINK CREATIVELY


Your turn: what are your favourite ads that truly stood out from the rest - that were truly creative?

More evidence of Twitter abuse

As a follow up to my last post, in which I call into question the intentions of certain Twitterers, here is another example of abuse.








This is a phony Jennifer Aniston account, called jenifferaniston (notice the incorrect spelling). This is not the real Jennifer Aniston. This person is following exactly 0 other people, and has exactly 0 Tweets. Yet almost 120,000 people are following this fake celebrity that is NOT EVEN TWEETING!

That's 120,000 people that are either clueless, or trying to get other jenifferaniston followers to follow them (as part of a popularity contest I referred to in the original post). Again, neither of those are good reasons to follow this bogus account.

Twitter abuse, in my opinion. And again, not Twitter's fault.

Twitter still being abused

Twitter has done enough little things to preserve its relevance and importance and make it the tool it has become today, but it's not free of faults. And I should clarify that the faults aren't Twitter's, they are Twitter users' faults.







Twitter has many benefits and applications, but like many social network marketing tools, has become nothing more than a popularity contest for so many. I see far too many examples of users simply trying to maximize the number of followers they have, as though it is some measure of importance. More on that in another post. Today I am referring to the blind followers - those that follow anyone - presumably in hopes of finding new followers (assuming the people they follow will in turn follow them).

To me that's evidence that they are doing nothing more than seeking to maximize followers. That's why I refer to it as a popularity contest.

Here is the most dramatic example I have found so far: A Twitterer called YouIsMe. This account makes no secret of the fact that they are just an experiment in Twitter popularity. Their description spells it out for everyone: "Mysterious Twitter Social Experiment". They have only one tweet that reads "Is this even possible?" Yet they have more than 12,000 followers at the time of this post.

That's 12,000 people that have signed up to learn absolutely nothing.

They've decided to follow because they think it's funny, or (more likely) because they're blindly following as part of their popularity effort. Neither reason is a good one.

There is lots of Twitter abuse out there, and this is an obvious example.

Zellers sets a new standard for terrible

This is www.zellers.com...















So let's reflect on this for a minute...

• Approximately 95% of the space "above the fold" on the home page has nothing on it
• Approximately 75% of that space is just BLANK
• I can't find any sort of catalogue (just the recent flyer) or list of products they sell
• I can't buy anything online
• The home page seems to want to promote their specials, but they don't update it often enough (that Sung promo's been there for a WHILE)

Sure, maybe they want to drive shoppers to the physical store, but COME ON. You mean to tell me that you really don't want any business from the MILLIONS of people that shop online?

The reason I saw this in the first place is I am in the market for a new flat screen TV. Zellers has an electronics department. And TVs are a big ticket, big margin item!

No catalogue.

No ability to shop online.

I took my hundreds of dollars somewhere else.

Email Best Practices

A couple of weeks ago I attended MarketingSherpa's Email Summit in Miami. Conferences like these are always so inspiring. In fact, there are 10 things I want to share with you from the conference. These are ideas and themes that will help you build business through email marketing. Some of these things will be familiar to you, some will be new thoughts. I hope you find something that will help you get more share!

Here they are: the Top 10 Things I Took Away From the Email Summit (full article can be read at shareofmarketing.com):

10) Email Marketing and Social Media Marketing are the ONLY TWO marketing tactics receiving bigger budgets by more companies than not.
9) If your email fails, try it again (but differently, of course)!
8) Email Marketing is a science as much as it's an art. Test your new emails using control groups.
7) Think about what your customers are reading (e.g. do you really want them to 'submit' to you?).
6) Put email technology tools to work. And keep tweaking to improve response.
5) A simple test to evaluate your email content: "Where am I?"; "What am I supposed to do?"; "Why should I?"
4) Analytics are a given.
3) Landing pages are a given.
2) Testing is a given.
1) People are NOT sick of emails. They're sick of receiving emails that aren't relevant to them. So keep sending them, but make them important, relevant, valuable and compelling!

Again, you can click here to read the full article, which includes commentary for each of the thoughts above. Enjoy!

A great way to think about your landing pages

At the MarketingSherpa EMail Summit today, I sat in a great session on creating great landing pages for email and other marketing campaigns (led by Dr. Flint McGlaughlin of MarketingExperiments). Tons of great stuff but for me the highlight was a quick checklist for judging the effectivenes of your landing page. Imagine that your browsers are asking these three questions:

1) Where am I?
2) What can I do here?
3) Why should I?

Genius in its simplicity.

Don't sell me a product, sell me a benefit!

You would think that goes without saying, but I see so many case of companies that use marketing programs to sell a product, without telling me why I should buy said product!

(SURPRISE QUIZ: Does your web site home page talk about how long the company has been in business, where it's located, and what it does? I don't care! Tell me why you matter to me!)

Case in point: I was at Shell getting gas and a car wash yesterday. I went in to pay and the cashier asked if I wanted to upgrade the basic wash to a deluxe wash. Somewhat impressed by the attempt at an up-sell, I played along...


Cashier: "Would you like the tri-colour deluxe wash for an extra $2?"

Me: "No thank you."

Cashier: "It's a small price to pay for a better wash." (getting there...)

Me: "Why is it better?"

Cashier: "It's a 'tri-colour' wash."

Me: "What does the 'tri-colour' do?"

Cashier: "I'm not sure. But it's three colours."


SO CLOSE!!

I passed on the upgrade.

With the signage on the counter and the (failed) attempt by the cashier, it was obviously a deliberate marketing campaign that the store and/or company was running. But the most important factor was missing - the reason for buying!

Sell the benefits! Sell the benefits! Sell the benefits!

Chew on this thought for a bit...

Do you have your fax number on your business card? If yes... why?

Do you have your blog address on your business card? If no... why not?

VISA shows up in the right place at the right time

If marketing is all about creating the demand for a product (in the mind of the consumer) then matching the perfect product to that need, VISA has set a new standard.

You've probably already seen it, or even taken advantage of it (albeit, only if you're in the US - more on that in another post!). If you've chosen some products from amazon.com lately, and you're in the checkout process, there's pane at the top of the page showing you:
- How much you will be spending with this checkout
- How much you would save with an amazon VISA card ($30)
- Your new total for the checkout







So if you're about to buy $35 worth of books, there it is staring you right in the face: get a VISA (instantaneously, no less), pay $5 instead!

Why wouldn't you?

Sure there are reasons not to, but they are the same reasons you would have with any other card. VISA has created an offer so compelling, though, that they certainly have a far better chance of signing you up than any other card would. They are in the right place at the right time!

Think about your online ads. Are you simply trying to find the sites that offer the most impressions and/or the right demographics and hoping a good portion of the audience might be interested enough to click through, or are you finding sites that by their nature direct people to the EXACT desired behviour that suits your product, then promoting said product right when it would be most useful to them? See the difference?!

Yup, cool matters

Sometimes, despite all the planning, demographic analysis, targeting, contingency planning, sensitivity analysis, and focus groups, cool just works.

This really cool microsite makes me want to buy an R8. Period.

(turn sound on, click logo, and make sure you click "start now")

Have your say: What are some other examples of "really cool, and therefore effective"?

A Whopper of a Marketing Gamble

Burger King just decided to join the reality TV / viral marketing / microsite game with its new "Whopper Freakout" campaign (www.whopperfreakout.com). The premise is simple: how angry would people get if they took away the Whopper?

This is a bold play to generate buzz, but how much buzz is really being generated? And at what risk? This actually seems like a lose-lose proposition when you think about it. If you threaten to take it away and no one cares, then what? If you threaten to take it away and people freak out (which was the desired intention it would seem), then you've just made a lot of your most loyal customers mad. Lose-lose.

Here's the bigger point: they tried to create a viral marketing campaign by creating the microsite and utilizing the reality aspect. But the only way to really generate buzz or any kind of viral momentum in this case is to keep the scam going for some time. People would create "bring back the Whopper" blogs and petitions, and BK would be all over the news, which in theory would be the objective. That's an enormous risk, which wisely, they avoided. If you watch the video on the microsite, they reveal right off the bat that it's a gag. Once that happened, the viral potential vanished. It just turned into a weak gag reel that you might see before the previews in a movie theater. Furthermore, in all honesty, the customers really didn't freak out. They were surprised and confused, but no one jumped over the counter.

When all is said and done, they accomplished their objective: to demonstrate that people love their Whopper. OK, I buy that. But they could have accomplished that in many other ways, most of which would have been even more genuine and in all likelihood more effective (think: "How much do you love your Whopper?" contest). The issue I have is that in an attempt to demonstrate marketing savvy, they basically created a gag reel disguised as a viral marketing campaign. I got the message, but the execution fell below my expectations.

But then again, here I sit, writing about it!

What are your thoughts? Success? Gag gone bad?