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Added for You - Information Architecture and Your Online Success
Obvious Experts enjoy a compelling advantage over their competition; they’re the first ones thought of when there’s a challenge to be addressed. Obvious Experts are resources whose advice and expertise are welcomed, trusted, and enthusiastically recommended. When you become an Obvious Expert, prospects come to you pre-sold on your competence. This speeds sales and avoids pricing issues based on unfamiliarity and a resulting lack of trust.Here are seven ways to use technology to promote your professional services on a limited budget:Technology makes it practical to promote Obvious Expert status. You can:Maintain constant contact. You can keep in constant contact with clients and prospects without the costs of printing and mailing.Educate your market. Show prospects what to look for when buying and how qu
Tips
Make the goal or purpose of the website obvious on the home page:
Just like an effective advertising campaign, a good website must provide an obvious call to action. This means that your audience should be able to navigate intuitively even if they have never been to your website or heard of your company. Your website should have one or two primary goals. The entire site should funnel visitors into the channels associated with these goals to ensure visitors don't become confused or frustrated before accomplishing at least one
How can you be found on the web?The web is a necessity as we have mentioned before. It has become one of the things that you will be asked about in almost every meeting you have with clients. You may also be asked at any of the networking groups you attend. Why do people ask? It is simply to verify what you are saying. The web has a tendency to substantiate all of the elevator pitches and spiels that you give when first meeting with people. When I first started out reinventing myself and wishing to go back to my consulting background, I called on someone that I had worked with on some interesting projects. I told her what I was planning on doing since the project we were working on was cancelled. I forwarded my contact information outside of the project and the first thing she did was to look at the website I had at that time (www.BizMechanix
After the first couple of days I knew this was going to be a problem. I started looking for a topographic map of San Francisco to plan the optimal route for each direction of the commute. I soon realized that I'm not the first person to encounter such a challenge; I found a bicycle map online showing the hill grades of most streets. Using this resource, I was quickly able to find the optimum route and gladly regress to my athletic mediocrity. For the remainder of the month, while I was commuting on my bicycle, I used my newly planned shortcut to easily travel between my home and office.
Right about now you may be asking yourself, "What does this have to do with marketing?" Imagine the commute destination is an actual set of business goals you have online, and the San Francisco hills are the challenges your customers encounter during their "commute" on your website. Doesn't it make sense to find the quickest and easiest route for them? Wouldn't that allow more customers to make a successful trip? Without taking time to strategize and plan around the goals associated with a website, it's easy to create a number of obstacles that will frustrate, confuse, and anger your audience.
Information Architecture is a crucial planning step in website development. As we all know, "If you fail to plan, you can plan to fail". Nowhere is this more accurate than in the constantly evolving and highly competitive field of online marketing. The following is a list of common mistakes and suggested solutions (or at least things to keep in mind) in conceptualizing the information architecture of a website.
Tips
Make the goal or purpose of the website obvious on the home page:
Just like an effective advertising campaign, a good website must provide an obvious call to action. This means that your audience should be able to navigate intuitively even if they have never been to your website or heard of your company. Your website should have one or two primary goals. The entire site should funnel visitors into the channels associated with these goals to ensure visitors don't become confused or frustrated before accomplishing at least one
Would you be happy with reaching literally millions of people by being a web content provider. Whatever you're selling, it would be nice if you could do this on a regular basis, FOR FREE, through a large number of other people's ezines and websites, wouldn't it?Well this is what you can be doing when you start writing content and articles for the countless online newsletters, ezines and webpages that are looking for your input. One thing common to all Internet publishers is that they are all looking for good articles to publish.If you can be a content provider of interesting and informative articles for them you stand a good chance of getting included in their website/next publication. However you probably won't get included if it is simply a sales letter disguised as an article. But if you can provide good quality and informative web
After the first couple of days I knew this was going to be a problem. I started looking for a topographic map of San Francisco to plan the optimal route for each direction of the commute. I soon realized that I'm not the first person to encounter such a challenge; I found a bicycle map online showing the hill grades of most streets. Using this resource, I was quickly able to find the optimum route and gladly regress to my athletic mediocrity. For the remainder of the month, while I was commuting on my bicycle, I used my newly planned shortcut to easily travel between my home and office.
Right about now you may be asking yourself, "What does this have to do with marketing?" Imagine the commute destination is an actual set of business goals you have online, and the San Francisco hills are the challenges your customers encounter during their "commute" on your website. Doesn't it make sense to find the quickest and easiest route for them? Wouldn't that allow more customers to make a successful trip? Without taking time to strategize and plan around the goals associated with a website, it's easy to create a number of obstacles that will frustrate, confuse, and anger your audience.
Information Architecture is a crucial planning step in website development. As we all know, "If you fail to plan, you can plan to fail". Nowhere is this more accurate than in the constantly evolving and highly competitive field of online marketing. The following is a list of common mistakes and suggested solutions (or at least things to keep in mind) in conceptualizing the information architecture of a website.
Tips
Make the goal or purpose of the website obvious on the home page:
Just like an effective advertising campaign, a good website must provide an obvious call to action. This means that your audience should be able to navigate intuitively even if they have never been to your website or heard of your company. Your website should have one or two primary goals. The entire site should funnel visitors into the channels associated with these goals to ensure visitors don't become confused or frustrated before accomplishing at least one
In the last Lesson (Look at my bio box below to get a link to it) we talked briefly about influence, our attitude and how it could be used to sell more.Friend, it’s very important to understand this point:When you have your own business you must lead your customers to make a buying decision. You must assume the role of a leader and use the influence you have to convince your customers that your product or service is the correct solution to their problem.Here’s a short story that illustrates this lesson:When I was director of economic development for the City of Utica, NY there was a company that was in financial trouble that wanted the city’s help. It was my job to complete the due diligence on the company to see if the were eligible for financial support and to make sure that any financial assistance we provided them wou
Right about now you may be asking yourself, "What does this have to do with marketing?" Imagine the commute destination is an actual set of business goals you have online, and the San Francisco hills are the challenges your customers encounter during their "commute" on your website. Doesn't it make sense to find the quickest and easiest route for them? Wouldn't that allow more customers to make a successful trip? Without taking time to strategize and plan around the goals associated with a website, it's easy to create a number of obstacles that will frustrate, confuse, and anger your audience.
Information Architecture is a crucial planning step in website development. As we all know, "If you fail to plan, you can plan to fail". Nowhere is this more accurate than in the constantly evolving and highly competitive field of online marketing. The following is a list of common mistakes and suggested solutions (or at least things to keep in mind) in conceptualizing the information architecture of a website.
Tips
Make the goal or purpose of the website obvious on the home page:
Just like an effective advertising campaign, a good website must provide an obvious call to action. This means that your audience should be able to navigate intuitively even if they have never been to your website or heard of your company. Your website should have one or two primary goals. The entire site should funnel visitors into the channels associated with these goals to ensure visitors don't become confused or frustrated before accomplishing at least one
The annual panic about what to buy for Aunt Sarah is over for another year. Now you have to face a new problem! Not only do you have to find space to put the holiday decorations away, but also room for the new computer and exercise equipment.This is a great time of year to take a look at all the possessions you are accumulating, and find an alternative to stuffed closets and overflowing drawers.One of the basic principles of organization I call “Hemphill’s Principle:” "If you don't know you have it or can't find it, it is of no value to you." So before you begin to put away all those new clothes, for example, look at what is already there. As you do so, begin applying another basic organizing principle: "Put all like things together."When all the suits are hung together, and you discover there are 34, ask yourself these quest
Information Architecture is a crucial planning step in website development. As we all know, "If you fail to plan, you can plan to fail". Nowhere is this more accurate than in the constantly evolving and highly competitive field of online marketing. The following is a list of common mistakes and suggested solutions (or at least things to keep in mind) in conceptualizing the information architecture of a website.
Tips
Make the goal or purpose of the website obvious on the home page:
Just like an effective advertising campaign, a good website must provide an obvious call to action. This means that your audience should be able to navigate intuitively even if they have never been to your website or heard of your company. Your website should have one or two primary goals. The entire site should funnel visitors into the channels associated with these goals to ensure visitors don't become confused or frustrated before accomplishing at least one
Traffic- Traffic is the main determinant of success or failure of the affiliate marketing programs. When you have more traffic to your website, blogs or forum, you will have the chance of getting more and more money from the affiliate links that you have in them. Traffic building techniques will help to get more people to your website, blogs etc. You can use advertisement, email marketing, contests, search engine submission and such other techniques for increasing the traffic flow to your WebPages.More visitors to your site will get you more clicks on the affiliate links placed on your website. You can expect to reach a good income from these visitors when their numbers are more.Choose the correct affiliate program – Choose the affiliate marketing program that is in line with the website or blog you have. It should be relat
Tips
Make the goal or purpose of the website obvious on the home page:
Just like an effective advertising campaign, a good website must provide an obvious call to action. This means that your audience should be able to navigate intuitively even if they have never been to your website or heard of your company. Your website should have one or two primary goals. The entire site should funnel visitors into the channels associated with these goals to ensure visitors don't become confused or frustrated before accomplishing at least one of the primary goals. This can be done by tastefully positioning and/or highlighting content or links so they stand out.
Design the website to attract and support the target audience:
Many managers and management teams try to add their personal touch to a website because they want to express how they see the business to The World. This will confuse everyone accept the manager who personalized the site. The trick is to build the site around the target audience. Every demographic uses the Web differently and this must be accounted for while designing a site. Men and women are drawn to different colors, children are far more technical than their grandparents, and teenagers have far different schedules than their parents. There are hundreds of style, personality and preference combinations that make up any demographic; these are the factors that should be used to determine the basis of a website's architecture.
Use fewer words to attract the audience and communicate a message:
Designing a website is like telling a story. A good story teller will give a brief summary of a story, highlight all the key points and then provide a conclusion. Then if someone in the audience is interested in a specific topic they can ask for more detail. The links within a website allow the audience to inquire further about a specific topic. So avoid saying too much up front, this will save the audience time and keep more visitors on the website longer. The trick is using bullet points on the home page while saving prose to elaborate within support pages behind the home page.
Provide blank space throughout each webpage:
The human eye is naturally drawn to open space while scanning and reading. Uncluttered space gives our eyes a chance to relax and reset before continuing to focus on words and pictures. A website that is littered with content and images is naturally offensive and will immediately overwhelm even the most determined visitor.
Flatten a website around the primary goals and functions:
Flattening a website refers to minimizing the number of clicks or levels available before you run out of supporting links. A given website can be set up in an infinite number of ways including vertical links/pages (supporting links/pages) and horizontal links/pages (parallel links/pages). To use the story telling simile above, horizontal links and pages represent topics while vertical links and pages represent questions. With that said, your website should provide access to the key information and functions within vertically shallow pages. In fact, the best websites will have the
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