These comments by Avinash Kaushik, Google's analytics guru, are true for many corporate websites. He "thinks one of the reasons why so many websites 'suck' today is because of the hippo - as in the 'highest paid person's opinion.'
And, yes, you're likely a hippo - a successful advertising executive, CMO or brand manager, pulling in a six-figure income, often found pontificating about what does and doesn't work online. You use tried-and-true metrics such as unique visitors and click-through rates to decide on the best design for your landing page or what content is best suited on your product site. "
[Source: AdAge]
In my experience it is often the least qualified person in the building who gets to decide the design and functionality for the company website.
This is a a fascinating phenomenon. In many other industries people actually take notice of their domain knowledge specialists. You don't find people telling the bridge engineers to move this pillar over 3 metres to suit a personal aesthetic. But in web everyone is an expert and can tell you how to do your job.
Many people working in advertising and marketing are steeped in print media tradition and knowledge and have little understanding of what the web is like and how people consume that media. I do wonder if this will change with a new generation coming through or not?
Source: Carruthers via Aide-mémoire
Labels: design, web design, Web Marketing, websites
Posted by Nick HaC @ 8:46 AM
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What a great video!
Facebook Value $15 Billion
Ford Motor Group Value $16 Billion
"There is absolutely no bubble in technology" - Peter Thiel
Posted by Nick HaC @ 10:16 PM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
You have heard of outsourcing? But what about crowdsourcing?
Instead of traditionally outsourcing work to agencies, new economy businesses are leverging a new paradigm of creative resource - the consumer.
Its a really exciting trend where more and more businesses are harnessing the power of the internet combined with the talent of the skilled / empowered / passionate consumers.
Examples:
- Looking for a new corporate logo? Hire a corporate branding agency OR run a internet "submit your logo" viral/interactive campaign with user voting capabilities to find your new brand. (London 2010 Olympics logo cost GBP400k, and it is quite frankly... shite)
- Hire Saatchi to make a 1 million dollar tv advertisement OR create a youtube submit you own video to win 50k viral campaign.
- Hire a professional photographer to make images for your marketing material OR use iStockPhoto.com and leverage the leagues of kids with cameras to capture that unique look for your business.
- Hire a market research firm to find out how people like your product, OR create an online viral poll/survey with incentives for participants and get real/honest consumer insight
- Spend billions on government paid scientific research, OR create million dollar prizes for scientists who create solutions to specificed problems (see Aubrey de Gray's Life Extension project)
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Warning, shamless self-promotion
At Shifted Pixels, we create campaigns that leverage the wisdom of the masses for our clients. If your interested, contact us for a quick chat.
Labels: behaviour, communities, consumer, Ideas, social networking, web 2.0, websites
Posted by Nick HaC @ 6:08 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
It's estimated that up to 50 percent of visitors to landing pages will bail in the first eight seconds.And while that amount of time can feel like an eternity to a bull rider in the rodeo, it's a mere blink of an eye to an email marketer hoping for strong conversions and a positive return-on-investment.
Online marketers spend countless hours and untold millions trying to make recipients click on a link leading to a landing page. But delivering only clicks is short-changing the company. Marketers need to convert prospects to customers; clicks need to result in purchases. with online marketing, the bridge between the click and the credit card is generally a landing page.
As online competition intensifies, greater efforts are being placed on maximizing revenues from each and every opportunity. And few opportunities are as rich with possibilities as when an email recipient clicks a link within a message and comes knocking at your online door.
A MarketingSherpa reader survey found that average landing page conversion rates for email campaigns ranged from 5.67 percent to 11 .31 percent for free offers, and from 5.67 percent to 7.63 percent for e-commerce campaigns.If your conversion rates are running near the bottom or below those ranges, consider making changes to your landing page program. A new evaluation by Silverpop of landing pages from 50 companies finds that placing a little more effort on nurturing recipients once they hit those landing pages would be time and money well spent. This report, evaluating landing pages from companies throughout North America and the United Kingdom, can serve as a valuable guide.
Key Findings
Landing pages that pass the eight-second test successfully feature a number of important attributes. Unfortunately, many of those reviewed in this study failed to grab the attention of customers and prospects, leading them down a clear path to conversion. Silverpop found that:
- Successful landing pages grab attention quickly by matching the promotional copy in the email's call-to-action that yielded the click. Yet 45 percent of the landing pages evaluated failed to repeat the email's promotional copy in the headline.
- Catapulting a clicker to a Web site's home page generally fails to deliver on the promise inherent in the email's call-to-action. Yet 7 percent of email campaigns dumped recipients there.
- Recipients can be taken aback when they click on a link and end up on a landing page without the same look and feel as the email that captured their attention. But three out of 0 marketers risked confusing customers and prospects by sending them to landing pages not matching the email.
- Asking too many questions can lead prospective customers to become wary and frustrated enough that they abandon the process. Nevertheless, 45 percent of landing pages that included forms required more than 0 fields to be completed.
- While the presence of a navigation bar on a landing page can be a distraction that pulls visitors away from the primary conversion goal, nearly seven out of 0 landing pages included them.
- Professional writers know it's a lot harder to write short copy than long. Apparently some marketers are taking the easy way out, since 25 percent of the landing pages reviewed by Silverpop required scrolling through more than two screens of text.
Labels: advertising, behaviour, Email, Marketing, online, websites
Posted by Nick HaC @ 6:13 PM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
A client of ours recently asked for a brief explanation as to how Search Engine Optimisation works, we couldn't resist but share this on the blog. Leave a comment and let us know what you think?
SEO is a combination of keyword research, onsite optimisation and offsite link building.
Keyword Research
Keyword research involves finding the right keywords to optimize for, in the context of SEO Budget and Keyword competition. For example "Resume Template" receives 10 times the search volume of "CV Template', thereby making it a more attractive keyword to rank for.
Onsite Optimisation
Onsite optimization requires tweaking the placement and density of specific keywords on your website, as well as ensuring page names, file names, internal links and alt tags are targeted to your chosen keywords.
Basically if you want to rank well for a keyword, eg "ipod fitness" you need to ensure that this phrase is in the page title for your website, and appears in with an appropriate "Keyword Density" throughout your website copy.
Link Building (Offsite Optimisation)
This process involves researching and building links from contextually relevant external websites that have as high a Google Page Rank as possible. It is often necessary to buy high quality inbound links to achieve rankings for competitive keywords.
Posted by Nick HaC @ 2:26 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
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We have observed several trends in writing effective and compelling copy for websites.
These tips probably dont apply to highly factual or technical websites, but if you are selling or delivering a marketing or brand message then read on...
1. Create Allure
Just like first dates, writing compelling website copy is about not giving away too much information. Its kind of like trying to spark an interesting conversation with your website visitor, and then leaving them with a lingering desire to find out more.
2. Keeping it Simple
Try and only have 1 or 2 concepts per page. If you have a large number of ideas on a page, and the web visitor become even slighly confused, they may be likely to close your website and keep looking.
3. Its not about you!
People don't care about you and your credentials, they care about themselves and their problems.
Instead of writing:
"We are the leading provider of X, and our expertise ensures our position as the number 1 in the Y industry."
You can flip the message on its head:
"Are you looking for a X provider you can trust? You may feel more confortable knowing that all the Y Industry complexities and issues can be managed by the #1 market choice."
4. Short is sweet
Avoid long paragraphs or too much detail.
If you have lots of information, break it into bite size chunks over several small pages with a logical & super easy to use linking strategy.
A technique we use to spice up key points is using a 4 to 5 item bullet point list. Example
This technique be used to raise the impact of the key pieces of information you are trying to get across.
5. Search Engine Readiness
Pick a theme of 1 or 2 key phrases for each web page (eg "sydney oven repair" or "how to sell books online"). Try and achieve a "Keyword density" of 3 or 4 for each of your key phrases.
This will also subconsciously reinforce your brand message with the website viewer and increase the perceived relevance of the webpage.
6. Call to Action
Don't just put information on your web pages. You need to tell a story, to create a path.
I remember (vaguely) at University the TV advertising slogan AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action). It might seem that the same applies to web page copy.
Make sure your webpage is leading somewhere, and ensure their is a link at the bottom of each page suggesting to your visitor where they should go next.
The Results: Using these techniques we have been able to improve our average website visit length to our Shifted Pixels site from less than 1 minute to more than 3 Minutes! Chuffed :)
Posted by Nick HaC @ 8:03 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
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Color is probably one of the most powerful psychological tools and we are often not even aware of its power. If you didn't know it by now, the industrial psychology has a special field that studies the in-depth psychology of color.
Color is a very important factor in online branding, not solely for logos, but for web graphics in general. A simple shade of red could either send a good, positive message or generate an aggressive state of mind. To put it clear: color drives emotions and emotions are the most important factor in decision-making.
Color psychology is rather hard to define when we consider cultural differences, personal beliefs and subjective meanings. But some general aspects might help you in choosing the right colors for online branding.
First of all for a business website you should avoid dark backgrounds, especially black. It is true that dark backgrounds, when used wisely, might create a 'charmed' atmosphere, but is this the message you want to send? Shouldn’t you be focusing on 'reliability', 'trustworthiness', 'quality' and other such positive values? For a business website, avoid the 'Twilight Zone' look and feel, unless you sell magic potions, books of mystery or other such products.
Light backgrounds are the best choice to create uncluttered layouts. This is also the latest trend in web design. The 'heavy' websites of the past, with their saturated colors, their marble tiles patterns and their stripped backgrounds are passe. Sophisticated designs employ light colors with random dark hue accents, simple layouts and high quality, unique graphics that match the color scheme of the design.
Logos should still employ powerful, recognizable colors, the kind of colors that capture attention and appeal to the senses.
Usually, blue logos don't fail because blue is the favorite color of a clear majority of people. A look at the clear blue sky would help your body produce the chemicals you need to relax. But when it comes to dark blues, too much might cause stress and nervous tension. Commonly logo designers use navy blue for business-to-business logos, for financial logos and for official logos, as this color suggests dependability and straightforwardness, precisely the values needed for such affairs.
Green, in its various shades, is perfect for the hospitality industry, food industry (especially for BIO products) cosmetic (if we consider Yves Rocher and Garnier) and ecology.
Although each color has its audience and its industry, there are cases when one color might be successfully employed for atypical applications. It’s just a matter of 'how to' design using that color and other hues to create the best color combination.
Reds and orange are not so easy to deal with, especially online. But they do have their fans (Ferrari, Coca-Cola, etc) and with a good design they will reach the targeted audience faster than other colors. That's because red is the color of energy, movement and excitement.
For more information on Corporate Branding and Website Useability and Psychology, Contact Shifted Pixels.
Posted by Nick HaC @ 2:55 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
