Help Stefan CampaignCeltnet WebInfo eZine
Tuesday, May 9, 2006
In This Issue
- Window on the Web
- Featured Article:
Boost Your Sales by Taking Your Customers by Surprise - Classified Ad Board
- Comment
- Business Tip
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Window on the Web
It's a chance to examine what other people are doing on the web and to see whether they have ideas or functionality that can be modified, adapted or used as a source of inspiration for my own website. Ideas are the fuel that drive any successful website they lead to new content and new functionality as well as new ways of improving and optimizing existing web pages to deliver better optimization and hopefully higher page rankings in the search engines.
As a result this edition of the eZine is given over to the ideas and techniques that can catapult a website that's simply 'good' into one that's great. Often, of course, this is the case of finding that one unique idea which gives you the edge in your marketing or the individualization of your website. Such ideas come from a spark of creative genius which could strike at any time. Whilst we're waiting for the million dollar idea, however, there are still things which can be done to improve any website. After all, perfection is that thing which always lies over the next hill.
Dyfed
Editor/Publisher
Email me @ editor@celtnet.org.uk
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Feature Article
Boost Your Sales by Taking Your Customers by Surprise
by Jeff Baas
When's the last time you surprised prospective customers? "Me? Never! You can't do that to customers. You'll drive them away!" Yet I tell you that it is possible to surprise them and have them glad that you did.
What I'm talking about is coming at them from a direction they don't expect. Done right, they'll be thrilled that you jumped out at them unexpectedly.
One of the greatest hungers that people have is the hunger for something different. From the little baby pitter-pattering its little palms across the floor as it explores the rugged wilderness of its living room to the grown man or woman saving up for an expensive trip of a lifetime, we crave to experience something new and refreshing in life.
So if people all crave something new, why do we, as marketers, try to convince them of the value of what we're selling by writing the most mundane, clichéd sales copy? You know, the kind that drones on in emotionless recitation of dry facts about our products?
They've seen that kind of stuff many times before and it really motivates them . . . to doze off.
Take, on the other hand, one marketer who chose to take a different approach. Not long ago, a 21-year-old college student got the idea to create a one-page website and sell advertising space on it. But instead of approaching businesses and asking them to buy, he took a different approach. He announced he was going to sell his marketing space by the pixel.
Pixels, by the way, are the extremely tiny dots on your computer screen that make up the words or images on it. Each image, each word on your screen, is made up of many of these dots, each one colored so that, all together, they form the images or words that you see.
It dawned on him that an average computer screen has nearly a million pixels, so he announced he was going to create a webpage that contained exactly 1 million pixels and sell advertising for $1 per pixel. He calls his project "The Million Dollar Home Page (http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/)." The idea is so unusual that he's already nearly sold out all 1 million pixels at $1 each. People are falling all over themselves to buy tiny 10 pixel x 10 pixel blocks for $100. And he's doing interviews all over the world about his unique idea.
Now before you get the idea to do the same thing, be aware that there are already plenty of copycats out there and none of them are having anywhere near the success he is. But the point is, when you do something in a way that sets the expected way of doing things on its ear, it gets people's attention.
It delights them because it's so unexpected. And it disarms their natural skepticism. People who wouldn't consider buying advertising space are jumping on this site because it's cool. People who would never go to a site that is nothing but ads are going there in droves because it arouses their curiosity.
It ambushes them with something they never expected. And they're delighted about it.
Don't let your writing sink into a rut. Have the courage to look at people's expectations of your product in a cockeyed way. You might just find a way to ambush them with delight.
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About the author:
Jeff Baas is a long-time student of the steps to success required in a wide variety of disciplines. He's found the same principles lead to success in virtually every field, and failure comes when people try to skip around them. See these principles applied to Internet marketing in the Seven Steps to Starting a Small Business Online in the articles, product reviews and free marketing strategies newsletter at http://www.onestopwebsupport.com
Classified Ad Board
Is your ad out yet? Subscriber and co-op ads are listed on the Classified Ad Board. The board is refreshed every issue with a new batch of ads.
Comment
Creating a 'Perfect' Website
I know that in the quest for content we all tend to overlook all those other little things that go into making a great website. Things like correcting spelling and grammatical errors. The checking and re-writing of copy that becomes tighter and more readable as a consquence. However you look at it, paying attention to what you write is important, especially in a busienss/environment where the primary means of reaching your audience is via the written word. In many ways the world of the internet entrepreneur is very much like that of the hacks of London's Grub Street (where most of the writers congregated in the West End) during the latter half of the eighteenth century. There writers such as Samuel Johnson would seek to make a living by authoring, editing (and often publishing) their own magazines. A phenomenon that's now being replicated on the Internet over two centuries later. The more things change, the more they stay the same...
Beyond the obvious need for good copy there is also the requirement for more mundane housekeeping. As search engines find web pages via links your website should have within it a master page that contains links to all the other pages on your site (or at least links to the sub-sections of your site which should all have their own links pages so that at most each page is rachable in three clicks from your home page. This provides each page with maximum exposure to the search engines' indexing spiders. Next you should take care of the pages themselves. It's undoubtedly a good idea to ensure that your HTML/XHTML markup is valid. This has the twin benefits of ensuring that the web spiders can crawl and index the entire content of your pages. It also lets your site's visitors know that you have taken the care to properly craft your pages. Moreover, the W3C (in effect the internet's standards authority) provide free tools to validate your web pages which can be found at http://validator.w3.org/. They also provide you with a nice logo to use to show that your web page has been correctly validated by them. I use this service as it not only validates the mark-up of your web pages but it also helps to validate things like end tags for URLs and fromatting. Things that are often missed if you hand-craft your web pages.
There are also other things you can do, such as maintaining a consistent 'look and feel' across your entire website. Making sure that the site logo occurs on every page, making navigation easy with simple 'home' and 'back' buttons on each page, giving your visitors a 'breadcrumb' trail so that they know where they are within your website. These links and means of navigation also lend the impression that your site is easily navigable which will make any visitor feel comfortable and at home there.
Business Tip
Advertize, advertize, advertize
It may be an obvious tip this month, however it's one that can't be stressed enough. You may have good Google ranking, but even then you're probably not really reaching the widest possible audience for your product or service. As with physical 'bricks and mortar' companies the only real way of maximising the number of people who know about you is to market your product or service with advertising. This can be achieved with programs such as Google's Adwords (see the links button on the left) or by advertising in on-line classified advertisements. These are a great source of traffic (and I use them a lot for my own eBay misspelling search tool). This kind of advertising needn't cost you a penny either, as many of these on-line classifeds are entirely free to advertise in (though most have some kind of paid option that provides for greater exposure, just as this site does.