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Good Content Pays!
Traffic to a site can be a blessing or a curse. Visitors who find what they are looking for, are engaged in what the site offers, and/or come away with a positive impression become the site owner's best allies and customers. But lead a visitor to believe that they will find what they are looking for and then not provide on your promise and you will find yourself being stabbed in the back repeatedly by people you will never know. As discussed in another article, "What Are the Benefits of Good Design on the Web?" the task of the site owner is not simply to ask all the right questions and make sure the designer interprets the answers correctly. Just as challenging is the need for the correct content-content that is largely dictated by the answers to the same questions so important to good design: Who are the visitors? What are they looking for? What is their situation, are they rushed? Are they knowledgeable? Are they looking for opinions or facts? Are they the kind of prospect the site owner is looking for?
Much is made of the importance of "fresh" content, but I posit that the right content is ageless if it's still relevant to the audience it's targeted toward and the business objectives continue to be met. A constant infusion of ill-aimed content on top of bad or incorrect content is no answer to the challenge of gaining and keeping customers. So the question is, "What's the right content?" As Michael Gerber states in his must-read book, E-Myth Revisited, "It is in the understanding of value, as it impacts every person with whom your business comes into contact, that every extraordinary business lives." Deep knowledge of your customers will define your entire business and make clear the boundaries of your content.
Content development is often a missed opportunity for creativity. Here a team can and should gather to read and digest what the psychographics profiles indicate the interests and motivators of the audiences are. As a hedge against myopia, your team should include one or more from outside your company or immediate colleagues. The same scenarios that influence the designers should be the frameworks for role-playing within the content team.
No matter the intent of the site ? whether e-commerce, private intranet, public promotion, nonprofit research, or secure account management ? the measurement of success, the determinant of how much the site is returning on the owner's investment, is found in the server logs. They tell the story of the visitor's travels through the site. If the content is good, visitors will linger when they find content that resonates with who they are and their situation. If they stay less than a minute, going to another site from the first page they land on, you are looking at either a visitor who realized they were not looking for what you were offering, or a visitor who was turned off by the content they perused in those first 30 seconds. Good content engages; good content pays!
Stephen Dill
SRD InterActive
srd@srdinteractive.com
www.srdinteractive.com
Stephen Dill is a seasoned marketer with expertise in the development and use of interactive channels and their integration with traditional marketing channels. Stephen has held leadership and/or consulting positions in small companies, Fortune 500 companies and the military. He has extensive experience in conceptualizing and articulating new concepts, organizing teams and managing projects through to completion.
Tableless Web Designs: Why I Switched
Since I made the switch 6 months ago to a tableless design on my main site, I've noticed some interesting things: My search engine rankings have dramatically improved My bandwidth usage has dropped about 50-75% I can now make changes to the look and feel of my site easily by just changing the one file, the stylesheet. Let's look at why my search engine rankings improved. Now that I have less un-indexable code on my pages, the search engines can now spider my site quicker. Less code, more content, therefore a better ranking. Makes sense, doesn't it? Bandwidth costs money, and unless you have a really good hosting plan with lots of bandwidth, then your larger files will take up more room on your server, and take a lot longer to load. Tableless designs use up considerably less bandwidth and are more accessible. Every once in a while I may want to alter the look of my site. I like to change font colors, link colors, menu items, etc?Before I started using tableless designs, these changes took me hours to do. Now I just open up my stylesheet, make the changes I want, and in a few minutes I have my site updated with the new look and feel. It's so easy! For a client who wants to make their own changes, tableless designs could literally save them thousands on tech costs. Most of my clients still want sites with tables. I now give them the choice of either style. After all, the customer needs to be happy, right? Some people have the misconception that utilizing tableless designs means having a boring and less graphical site. Nothing could be further from the truth. Take a look at one of my favorite websites: http://www.csszengarden.com/. At that site you can really appreciate what can be accomplished through css-based tableless designs. Beautiful! Make the switch to a more profitable, usable, and accessible website! Copyright 2005 - Karen Blundell
Plugging the Dreaded World Wide Web Black Hole is Just the First Step
You have created your custom error page so now all of that traffic that use to go into the World Wide Web black hole now stays on your web page. But if you don't do the following 15 Minute exercise once or twice a month you are not Maximizing those Lost visitors
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Web Publishing Guide for the Beginning Entrepreneur (Part 1)
The best things don't come easy. - Quoted
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Designing Your Websites Directory Structure
Any kid, and their grandmother too, can make a webpage. There are many "wysiwyg" webpage design applications that let you create a webpage as easy as typing text. But only a few people can create a WEBSITE. The stumbling block is knowing how to link webpages together to form a website. I have seen many websites that consist of a single webpage - about a mile long!
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Know what you want
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Differences between XP Icons and MAC Icons
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So You?re Hiring a Web Designer?You Have the Right to Demand these 7 Perks
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So Much About META Tags!
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Making Good Websites that Stand Out
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Imitation, The Smartest Form Of Flattery
Unless you are an inventor, most likely you are selling a product or service that is being offered by someone else, somewhere, at some time. The first person to start your type of business would have gone through a lot of trial and error. Thank that person, as now you can not only profit by not repeating the same mistakes, but by learning what they do to get business.
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