Visitors From Mars
Last Updated on Monday, 8 June 2009 12:28 Written by a2e Monday, 8 June 2009 12:28
He Visits You Each Day
In a former life I worked for the parent company of a group of companies. Each company within the group had it’s own budget but the parent company managed most of the IT needs. As the “Internet” person for the group I spent many hours in discussion with company “internet” people. (note the small “i” there). In small companies it’s very easy to get a reputation for being ITK (in the know) and as Computers and the Internet was then new technology, but public technology, this led to “office experts” springing up all over the world I suspect. I had an almost daily battle against these home grown likable experts fighting back all sorts of things they thought were essential to a project.
Some I battles I lost like having a policy of plain text only for Email – that one the whole world lost :-). But one I seldom lost after the first few toe to toe fights was how to get the best out of a web site. My career before the Internet became a tool that could be used was mainly focusing on Visual Basic Interface design. So the placings of buttons and colours etc had become second nature to me already. A typical example of a win for me would be the time I was asked to investigate why a company wasn’t getting any leads from their very expensive new web site. One look was enough to tell me what was needed. All the content was their but it was behind a big Java intro and I swear the was a disco going on in the server. Once past that the visitor was faced with a page full of technical jargon clearly intend as documentation for flying your average 747 blindfold.
It was about this time I thought up the notion of designing websites on the basis that any visitors to that site will be travelling from Mars. You should assume they don’t have a clue what they are looking at and you should use that to your advantage. After a short question and answer session what came was was the company really only had one use for the web site and that wasn’t winning prizes for it’s art content. All they really wanted to do was get their cateloge out to download. The solution to the problem was simple enough, a cut down version of the site keeping all the keywords and providing a slick navigation to further detail if needed but on the front page a big button saying “Download Our Latest Catalog”. The difference was something like a 20 fold improvement overnight.
If you only take one thing away from this story it should be to treat your potential visitors as Visitors From Mars, don’t assume anything but make sure you understand your intentions of what you want from them are very clear in deed. This pays in a big way and if you don’t think this has anything to do with your site I willing to bet it does. The one way this idea works against so many sites is in the way they use advertising on their site. Here’s what I mean;
Good For Google But...
You’ll notice like a lot of web sites this blog carries a AdSense placement in the header. If a visitor comes to the site and their eyes fall on that advert and that takes them away to another site without reading a word here, then fine, That’s my intention. Sure I would have loved everyone to stay but I’ll take the slice of cash via google every-time thanks. You see, I’m not selling anything here and so the more people I can attract to that banner the better. But is that true for your site ? what’s you first criteria ? I would say an auction sites number one aim is to get people to browse the auctions and stay long enough to register. Under those intentions placing advertising on your front door mat could be costing you more then you think.
Giving Traffic Away
Best to move ads away to the bottom where people will be when they are concidering leaving. If it’s a new auction site my advice would be to remove all advertising. Advertising works on the visitor in a swinging motion. Too much puts them off and it’s effect can be equated to the strength of your traffic low traffic higher effect. The weaker your traffic flow the less advertising you should show. You need traffic to drive advertising and then select the best advertising that suits your visitor profile.
