Taking Advantage of The Experience Factor
We read the newspaper, we watch television, and we listen to the radio, but we experience the Web; this is what makes ‘The Website’ one of the most powerful marketing tools available to today’s marketing executives. Unfortunately conventional wisdom has stifled the ‘experience factor’ on most website presentations.

Traditional circulation based advertising biases and pitch-mandated direct mail practices from metric-minded agencies have limited businesses’ ability to take advantage of the Web’s capacity to provide a more active, creative, and penetrating sensory experience aimed at furthering marketing objectives.

As consumers of information we all filter what our mind considers irrelevant. When we go to a website we quickly recognize where banner and text advertisements have been placed and proceed to ignore them for the rest of our visit. Even television ads are becoming increasingly less effective, even as their cost increases. Yet people will watch and even look forward to creative, entertaining advertisements that capture our imagination and inform our ability to make better decisions about what we buy and who we buy from.

Does Anybody Really Know What Works?
It is easy to rely on after-the-fact number crunching and projected head-numbing statistics to justify how marketing campaigns are constructed rather than on the less predictable but more relevant elements of psychology and human nature. But do numbers really tell the true story, or are they just protect-your-butt justification designed to ease everyone’s mind when it comes time to commit to a budget?

Take the entertainment industry for example. Here is an industry that can tell you how many people watched a particular television show on a per minute basis. So, if these and the other cerebral-cortex-boggling figures are so telling, why do networks have such a hard time delivering programs that people will watch; or do they yank new potentially successful shows off-the-air based on their initial numbers before they ever have a chance to find an audience?

Television is such an expensive medium, its practitioners have come to rely on seemingly safe, tried, hackneyed old formulas, knowing that it is easier to sell sponsors what used to work, even when they know there is little chance of it working again. The fact is nobody really knows what combination of stories, writers, actors and producers is going to capture the publics’ imagination.

So what does this have to do with Web-marketing? Everything. The Web is not an expensive production medium and that allows marketers to experiment with different techniques and creative. Unless your Web-business is a circulation-based advertising model, there is no reason to limit your creative marketing to worn-out concepts and number-based incentive formats that for the most part, no longer work.

Sensory and Experience Design Concepts
The essence of good advertising and its big brother marketing, is creative story telling; stories presented effectively, inform, persuade, and penetrate our consciousness based on their ability to tap into our sensory experiences. There has developed over the last few years two new approaches to design that acknowledge this powerful aspect of human nature: Sensory and Experience Design.

The implications of Sensory and Experience Design can be found in everything from product development to package design. When we talk about SenEx Design we are talking about how real people react to their experience with products and marketing presentations.

We experience the world through our senses: sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste. Stand in a supermarket and watch people shop for fruit and vegetables; they pick them up, squeeze them, turn them over and over looking for flaws, smell them, and if the store keeper isn’t looking they may even have a taste. When people buy a car, they look at the specifications listed in the brochure, but they still go to the showroom, kick the tires, run their hands along the shinny new paint, smell the leather interior, and take that sucker for a test drive to see how she handles. It’s all about experiencing the product through our senses - it’s that sensory experience that becomes embedded in our memory.

To date most companies have lagged in their efforts to implement these new SenEx marketing communication approaches on their websites due to their obsession with search engine optimization issues that focus on the volume of traffic rather than the quality of the marketing message. Business seems to be stuck in a circulation-based advertising and mass-market mindset that runs contrary to the Web’s niche market ‘Long Tail’ nature and its ability to communicate by presenting information that appeals to a variety of senses.

Search Engine Optimization Issues
No one will argue with the desire of website owners to attract large numbers of viewers to their sites. But this desire has spawned an entire industry of people claiming to be able to provide website owners with the holy grail of search engine optimization: making it to the top spot in an organic search on your favorite search engine.

Not everyone willing to pay for an S.E.O. expert to optimize his or her site can be number one in an organic search. And of course there is the issue of paid search placement that trumps organic searches.

As fast as search engine optimization experts develop ways to beat the search engines, the experts at the search engines change their algorithms, and my money is on the guys at Google.

When it comes to search engine optimization consider the following important issues and questions:

• Do the search engine tactics employed on your site degrade, obscure, or in some way diminish the ability of your website visitors to quickly find the information they want?
• Do these search engine tactics impede your ability to effectively deliver your marketing message in a way that attracts attention, triggers relevant sensory experience, and embeds your message in your visitors’ memories?
• Do tactics like outbound reciprocal links and inline body-text links send people away from your site when you want them to stick around and hear what you have to say?
• Do you have excessive repetitive copy-text on your site aimed at being indexed by search engines rather than read by people for clear concise understanding?
• Have you reduced your complex message or instructions to a series of bulleted points that confuse rather than clarify?
• Do your search engine tactics concentrate on the volume of traffic rather than the quality?
• Is the traffic you’re attracting leaving your site as fast as it’s arriving?

The lesson we should learn from SenEx Design concepts is that websites need to be designed for people not search engines. Delivering a clearly understandable marketing message is achieved by tapping into the psychological and emotional responses triggered by sensory experiences. That is how you need to communicate to an audience separated from you by the vast expanse of the Internet.

SenEx Web Design Using Audio and Video Techniques
People are hungry for information. In today’s fast-paced world the average person needs to constantly upgrade their knowledge of ever changing and more complex products and services. Things that were good for you yesterday today are harmful; products that don’t exist today will exist tomorrow. So it doesn’t matter if you are a homemaker, retiree, or a buyer for an international corporation, the need-to-know is constantly with us and it creates what Richard Saul Wurman have described as “Information Anxiety”.

We just don’t have the time to study everything we need-to-know or want-to-know that affects our business and personal lives. We need the information fast and in an easily digestible format. And we need that information presented in a way that will make it easy for us to retain it.

The power of Web-audio and video is their ability to illicit experiences by presenting information in a linear narrative that appeals to the senses of sound and sight. This ability attracts and focuses an audience’s attention on the material you want highlighted; it presents that material in an easily digestible format; it clarifies the meaning and significance of critical details; and it penetrates viewers’ consciousness so that the information is retained.

The following types of audio and video SenEx Web-presentations can be used to deliver a variety of material:

1. Web-commercials and Email Campaigns
2. Special Promotions and Product Offerings
3. Product Descriptions and Overviews
4. Testimonials and Reviews
5. How To Instructions and Tutorials
6. Frequently Asked Questions and Q&As
7. Expert Lectures, Analysis and Opinion
8. Background and History
9. Personality, Staff, and Business Profiles

Conclusion
We all have something we want to sell: a product, a service, a plan, an idea, or even ourselves. And anyone who has ever run a sales department will tell you the best way to sell is through human interaction and the best way to emulate that on a website is with Web-audio and video that uses Sensory and Experience Design techniques to deliver the message.

By Jerry Bader

A landing page is a website page that is created for one purpose - to persuade the site visitor to convert into a customer by making a sale, completing a form (thereby becoming a qualified lead), signing up for a newsletter, etc.

We provide this landing page quick reference so you can pull it out every time you are creating a persuasive landing page. It is divided into 4 sections and is intended to be an all-inclusive tip sheet.

Most importantly, consider that you have 8 seconds or less to convince your visitor to act. If you haven’t convincingly made your case in this time then your visitor will move on and will be lost, as the Internet has created the most fickle customer in sales history.

Page Layout

• Place your logo at the top left. Visitors expect it there so display your branding where it counts.
• If the visitor came from a search engine keyword search or a PPC ad, then place the keyword terms in bold at the top of the page. This reinforces to the visitor that they came to the right place.
• Always keep the Golden Triangle in mind. It is the most important and scanned part of the page. It is the area of the page that starts at the top left of the page moves to the top right side of the page then down diagonally to the bottom left of the page just above the fold. The fold is the area of a web page that the visitor sees without scrolling vertically. You should never force a visitor to scroll horizontally. This means that your landing pages should be able to be seen completely on an 800 x 600 screen resolution. Place your UVP (Unique Value Proposition) in the middle of the Golden Triangle.
• Contrast your Calls to Action with respect to the rest of the page - use contrasting colors, round vs. rectangular, straight vs. slanted, warm color vs. cold color, big vs. little. Make sure you can spot the Call to Action from 6 feet away.
  Place assurances, testimonials and guarantees in the far-right column
• Place logos to appropriate associations or online companies at the bottom of the page to show credibility - Verisign, BBB Online Reliability, certified by…, Alexa rank (if good), powerseller, live support, credit cards supported, open 24 hours a day, Hacker Safe, as seen in Entrepreneur Magazine, Chamber of Commerce, etc. 
• Don’t place external links on a landing page. Just allow them the option to proceed into completing the form and converting into a customer.
• Place privacy policies on the landing page. This instills confidence.
• Think of the Amazon.com website. Note their Call to Action is the hotspot at the top-right of all pages - add to cart, one click ordering, etc. This may also apply to you.

Writing Style and Content

• Spend time on your Unique Value Proposition (UVP) and place it into the center of the Golden Triangle. A UVP is the core differentiation of a company’s product or service from those of competitors. A complete UVP will describe the market and a company’s competitors and the key difference between competitors and your own company.
• Ensure that you don’t have big paragraphs. Visitors tend to scan pages instead of reading all of the text on them.
• Write using headers above paragraphs that summarize the following text.
• Use bullets where possible as visitors can quickly scan them. Search engines also prioritize bullets instead of long paragraph text.
• If you want to add a picture ensure that it is going to reinforce your message. You can easily lose significant sales by having the wrong picture on the landing page. 
• If the purpose of the landing page is to provide a white paper or article then create an image for the paper with enlarged text like the one below and place it on the page:

The Form

• Keep the number of fields on the form as small as possible. This is critical in getting them to complete the form.
• Add a Comments textbox asking for the visitor’s input. It can be key to qualifying leads. Those that complete this form with the services they are looking for should be contacted immediately. Here are some requests you can use for this Comments box:
• What is biggest problem that you need to solve now?
• What is the purpose of your project?
• Please list your goals for this project.
• How can we help you?
• In case the visitor doesn’t complete the Comments textbox on the first page, add a 2nd page with only a Comments textbox on it requesting the visitors comments again. Tell them that if they complete the Comments box now then they will receive an extra free white paper that is relevant to the same visitor. These visitor comments are important.
• Have the visitor check a box that says something like “YES! Send me the free white paper that will change my life.” It is the psychological method of coercing them into completing the rest of the form.
• Prominently list the benefits of completing the form. It is a major validation. Make sure to write the benefits in terms of the user’s benefits instead of the features of your product or service.
• Ensure you save the form information into a database and send emails out as soon as the form is completed so you can immediately contact the visitor. The lead’s effectiveness drops dramatically as time goes by. Contacting a lead within minutes is ideal.

Landing Page Mistakes to Avoid

• Graphics or text unrelated to the offer - limit copy to only the point of the landing page
• Long forms with unneeded fields - limit your form to what is absolutely essential
• Difficult to read fonts
• Navigation off of the landing page
• Placing important persuasive copy below the fold

By Michael Cordova

What makes for a great webpage?
Wouldn’t you like to know the main ingredients for creating a superior webpage? What basic elements you must have if you want a solidly designed webpage? A webpage that will stand out and be noticed by your visitors. One that will keep those visitors returning to your site, again and again. An effective webpage that is 95% better than most of the other pages on the Net.

Follow these simple design features when creating your next webpage and you will have the answer:

1. Good Keywords
The nucleus. The conception. Good keywords are the very first building blocks you must consider before your webpage even becomes a dim notion in your head. Picking the right keyword or keyword phrase is the ultimate factor that will determine the success or failure of your webpage. You must do major research on the keyword or keyword phrases that will be the focal point and drawing card for your webpage.

You must get this right. It is vital. It is the single most important element of a webpage. You can use keyword research software and sites such as GoodKeywords, Wordtracker.com, Nichebot.com, or superior keyword research software such as Brad Callen’s Keyword Elite.

Regardless of what process you favor, you must choose your keywords very carefully. You must check the competition for your chosen keywords or phrase. You must check the number of searches made each month for your keyword. You must also check the keyword density of your page to see if it will register in the search engines. You may have to adjust or fine-tune your keyword density at a later date.

Make sure you place your keyword in the title of your page. Place it in the first Headline on the page and many marketers also place their keyword or phrase in the url. For example: www.yourdomain.com/keyword.html This will help the search engines and surfers to find your page quicker.

2. Simple Design
Keep it simple. You must keep your webpage simple and direct. Keep it professional. Make sure it is readable and clear to all your visitors. Do a spell check. Do a grammar check. You may also want to check how your webpage looks in all types of browsers (www.anybrowser.com). Better safe than sorry.

Keep your visitors in mind at all times when designing your webpage. Keep it on topic, keep it related to your keywords. Most marketing studies show that’s it’s best not to confuse your visitors with too many options. If you’re selling a product or products, limit the number on each page to one product if you can.

If you have a comparison page, limit the number to three or four. Studies also show that if you present too many options or products, the conversion rate goes down, not up. Keep all your products related. If you have a page on laptops, don’t start discussing the benefits of owning a SUV.

Keep your sentences short and the number of words on a page down to 200 to 300. Many sites break up longer articles into multi-pages, this will be of some inconvenience for your visitors but you will have more room for advertising - your call.

3. Optimized
Let’s face it, the average webpage will get most of its traffic from the search engines, mainly Google, although MSN and Yahoo are also worth considering. Optimize your page for Google. Use a simple hierarchy, keep your pages no more than three clicks away from the main page. Linking all your pages to your index page is a good practice, always do this. The search engines will find your page faster if it is linked directly from the main index page of your site.

Using blogging software/structure that comes with such free blogging software as Wordpress will optimize your pages for you. Blogging systems have a linking hierarchy (categories, archives, etc.) that are very search engine friendly. It’s almost impossible not to optimize your pages if you’re using a blogging system. Plus, you have an RSS feed that will syndicate your content and place it into the search engines very quickly.

Check factors such as Mega Tags, title description and content. Use a robots text file for the search engine robots.

If you’re new to building webpages, you may want to check out Google’s Webpage Creator, you can create your pages and have it hosted free by Google and they will be indexed immediately in Google. Big Plus!

4. Easy Navigation
A great webpage will have easy and simple navigation. Link your page to and from your main index page if you can. Make sure you link to it from your sitemap page. Many webmasters put all the main links on their site at the top or the bottom of all their webpages, so that a visitor can freely move around and find what they’re looking for. Keep your visitors’ comfort level in mind at all times.

Double check to see all links on your webpage work! You may be surprised how many don’t work, especially if you link out to other sites. The search engines don’t like broken links, neither will your visitors.

Also double check to see if all images on your page display properly. Nothing will bring down the quality of your page faster than images that don’t load.

5. Fresh Content
A great webpage will always have fresh content. Make sure you update your webpage often. Our world’s technology changes rapidly, make sure your material is current and still revelant.

Remember, 9 times out of 10, the only reason a visitor is on your page is for information. Make sure you deliver. Make sure that information is recent and accurate. Besides, there is nothing like fresh content to keep your visitors interested and coming back for more.

6. Bookmarkable
A great webpage will always be bookmarkable. Your visitor will want to bookmark your page and return to it for more information. Make sure you make it easy for your visitor to bookmark your page. Use a bookmark script. Make sure you have a favicon, this is a small logo you place on your site and it will be automatically picked up and displayed in your visitor’s bookmarks, drawing attention to your page. Consider a bookmark and favicon like bread crumbs, all leading the visitor back to your page.

7. Cool
Every great webpage should have a WOW factor! Try to make your page stand out from the crowd. Try to make it unique, try to make it cool. Just remember, a simple professional webpage with valuable information is always cool. And remember there is nothing like a little good ‘word of mouth’ to get some traffic drawing PR for your page. Great buzz about your webpage is worth its worth in gold.

So the next time you’re designing a webpage, go all out and try to create your webpage with all of the characteristics listed above. Start with your keywords, keep it simple, proof-read and test for coding errors, create good navigation and optimize for the search engines, make sure you provide valuable fresh content and information. Last but not least, try your hardest to make your webpage memorable and bookmarkable. Make it a professional webpage that will be superior to the majority of other pages on the web.

Aim high and you will reap the rewards.

By Titus Hoskins