Some best practices and tactics for getting the most out of your banners and creative optimization:
* Create a benefit matrix around products. People typically think, “How will you help me?” and “What do you have for me right now?” List those genuine benefit statements and catalog the offers you can make right now.
* Choose the measure first, then the message. Decide how you’ll measure the banner’s success, then focus the banner’s message, offer, and call to action on achieving that metric. (That may seem obvious, but we see disconnects between those two factors all the time.) If you can’t map your message to your metric, chances are it won’t work.
* Looking for leads? Sell the lead conversion event in the banner and landing page. Tell them why they want to download the whitepaper and give you their info, not why they should buy your expensive technology product or service. Let your marketing escalation and salespeople do that.
* Keep it short. Don’t make people cycle through 20 seconds of slides to get the point of your offer. Make it three frames, max, two to three seconds each frame. If it takes more than three seconds to communicate your message, you’re too verbose. Get right to the payoff by using reverse-pyramid style copywriting. Start with the payoff and follow with the lead in or supporting facts.
* Use the power of suggestion. Tell people what you want them to do. Do want them to click now, download now, access now, get now, or sign up now? Tell them.
* Use a static call to action. Your call to action should appear on all slides, not just the last slide of a looping animation. On horizontal banners, place the offer or call to action on the right side. People read left to right, so their eyes will end on the offer or call to action. On skyscraper banners, place your static offer or call to action on the top and bottom of the banner. And be sure to use large fonts and contrasting colors.
* Treat your banner like a billboard. Your banner must stand out and communicate your message as if people were passing it in a fast-moving car.
* Use variety. Use a wide variety of graphical treatments so all your banner concepts look very different from one another. Even with different offers, if all your banners look similar at first glance, chances are they’ll perform at the same level. If one tanks, they’ll all tank.
* Keep offers simple. One benefit, one offer. Don’t put multiple offers in one banner.
* Deliver on your offer right away. Land people on instant conversion pages that deliver on the offer.
Web banner design basics
December 24th, 2008
Images vs. graphics in web design
December 24th, 2008Do photographic images get old on the web ?
What I mean is, photographic images placed in a prominent area of a web site like the header, seen by repeat visitors, time and time again. Does the recognition of this one (1) photo get old quickly for our site visitors ? Would it be more effective to use graphic images ? What is the psychology behind this ?
The psychology behind image recognition is simply this:
A photographic image is immediately recognizable to the web site visitor. The visitor sees the image for what it is, literally, because we have spelled it out for them (whell, not nearly as much as using words). The mind works subconsciously recognizing the image and not needing to work very hard to fill in any missing information…in other words…we get it ! Conversely with a graphic image, the site visitor fills in some of the information due to the image’s nature…beacause it is a bit more abstract. When the visitor “fills in the blanks” their mind is stimulated, they “make it their own” personalizing the content on even greater levels. One byproduct of this relates to repeat visitors…they end up not seeing the same old site.
So, to sum it all up, when the site visitor’s imagination kicks in, it allows them to see slightly different things (using graphic images vs. photographic images)in the same image each time they visit. It also allows a visitor to make the content more…”their content”. If your going to design using photographic images in the most prominent place on a website (like a header), one solution for “freshness” would be to cycle a few images using a random rotation. Similar to reading the book vs. watching the movie (a movie spells it out for you)…the book is always better , or at least that’s what they say.
4 types of web design links
December 24th, 2008Links are an important component in an online marketing campaign. Websites usually need a significant number of quality links to perform well in organic search rankings. Once upon a time, high-quality links were plentiful. But with the growth of the web, and an ever-increasing number of competing websites, garnering link love and attention is a time-consuming and tedious process.
There are 4 different types of links that web designers can work to obtain…
1. One-Way Links
A one-way link is a hyperlink from one website to another. For example, Website A links to Website B.
Undeniably, these are the best kind of links for a website to have, albeit the most difficult type of link to obtain. A website will usually need to contain unique and compelling content in order for another website to link to it without any payment or reciprocal returning link, but beware of non-trusted web sites that will link to you. You only want trusted and well ranked web sites to link to you.
2. Reciprocal Links
Reciprocal links are when two websites exchange links. For example, Website A links to Website B; and Website B links to Website A.
The value of reciprocal links is questionable, as you are essentially ‘trading’ links. Some search engines track the link patterns, and consider reciprocal links as “exchanges”. Many web designers believe that search engines place a lower value on reciprocal links than for one-way links, which is why their value is questionable.
3. Paid Links
Paid links are just that: links that are purchased. For example, Website A gives $ to Website B; then Website B links to Website A.
Compensatory links range from purchased text links to pay-per-click links, where a webmaster pays for clicks that are generated from the link. The upside to paid links is that they are not difficult to obtain if you are willing to pay. You can also control the rate in which the links increase, and how long the paid links last. The downside is that major search engines discourage webmasters from purchasing text links outright (most search engines accept pay-per-click links). In fact, if a search engine suspects that a website is trying to “buy” their way to the top of their organic rankings by manipulating the number of websites linking to a web page, they may ban the website from the search engine.
4. Network Links (3-Way)
Network links are links that are triangulated. For example, Website A links to Website B; Website B links to Website C; and Website C links to Website A.
Network links are an expansion of link exchanges, and generally make it more difficult for a search engine to discern the link patterns. As a result, search engines may assess the value of network links as one-way links rather than the reciprocal links that they really are. Excessive use of network links can be more easily identified by search engines.
Most web designers incorporate all the link types into their linking strategy.
Web Design 3.0
December 24th, 2008Source : Marta Strickland (paraphrased)
I have Bold-ed the semantic information in this post
What the Semantic Web — or Web 3.0 — Can Do for Marketers
Whatever You Call It, Get Ready for Greater Relevance
It’s been nearly 10 years since Tim Berners-Lee, who is credited with inventing the worldwide web, expressed his vision of a “semantic web,” in which all web data — and the meaning of that data — could be read by machines. Since then, much of the slow-moving progress toward this smarter and more powerful web has been courtesy of academics and data librarians.
Semantic web is just one of a few things often referred to as Web 3.0 — others include topics like data portability or mobile web. But I think entrepreneur Nova Spivack offered the most useful definition by simply calling it the third decade of the web (2010 to 2020) and referring to the technology trends that will hit maturity during that time. Most importantly, the next generation of the web will bring us out of information overload and be more relevant and meaningful.
Semantics refers to the meaning behind data. Right now, computers are good at sending data back and forth but not great at discerning the meaning of that data. Semantic web aims to change that. Perhaps it’s best explained in describing what marketers can hope to gain from it.
Improving Ads
Has your contextual advertising turned into a contextual nightmare? Current contextual advertising depends heavily on keywords. Sure, it seems safe to buy a word like “feet” — until your ad comes up right next to a story about severed feet. What if there were a technology that could analyze what is really being said on the page?
By using natural language processing and artificial intelligence, semantic advertising solutions, like Peer39, can look at the structure of a sentence and interpret word meaning and sentiment. Semantic text analysis relies on synonyms and relationships between concepts, rather than rudimentary keyword scanning. Identifying sentiment is becoming invaluable for advertising on user-generated sites such as blogs, where you wouldn’t want to place ads on a negative post.
Online advertising has another obstacle to overcome: information overload. We live in a world where information evolves at an alarming rate and, let’s face it, consumers trust each other far more than they trust advertising messaging. So how do we dynamically pull smarter and more relevant content into ads?
That’s where the efforts like Dapper MashupAds come into play. In addition to pulling from a brand site database, the dynamically generated ads can scan social content sites like Yelp and Flickr for the newest (positive) reviews and photos of your restaurant. It’s the power of your brand message only promoted by your consumers.
Improving Measurement
One of the toughest marketing challenges of recent times has been in measuring the success of social media. How do you measure the success of a human conversation? We can measure reach (visits, views, clicks, downloads). We can also measure exposure or buzz (what people are saying about our brand). But it’s inside those walled gardens that everything interesting is happening: How strong is the community? Are members active? Are we changing their minds? Changing their actions?
It’s the tough nut of the new marketing conversation, but Web 3.0 might be the key to cracking it.
Semantic technology is able to pull together connections between words and phrases. How often is concept “X” said in the same breath as concept “Y”? Measurement tools will be moving away from the tag cloud, and we’ll be able to immerse ourselves in the trends of the real conversation, not just the keyword of the day.
Next, there is the dilemma of message velocity; i.e., how far is my message traveling and how fast? Sure, that’s an easy thing to do when you are measuring a viral video or widget but what about a conversation? Semantic technology builds on meaning, not keywords. And so it doesn’t matter if your followers say, “The new Batman movie is going to be awesome” or “You have to see the ‘Dark Knight’ trailer”; semantic buzz tools will tie the conversation together.
Sentiment analysis is an increasingly popular tool in the marketer toolbox. And its next generation will look at the entirety of a comment or an article, from whom it came and to whom it was directed. It will use natural language processing and analysis of meaningful relationships to distinguish the “good” comments from “bad.”
And what about building a community of loyal enthusiasts? What about creating a relationship with your customers? Companies like Chat Mine measure the connections between members of the community and between people and concepts. By looking at both friending and popular dialogue, it can tell you if your brand brought a community together in passionate conversation.
When O’Reilly coined the term Web 2.0, the marketing world divided into skeptics and enthusiasts. And a wave of start-ups began rolling out under the 2.0 moniker. It’s only wise to fear the same for semantic web or Web 3.0. As nightmares of books and white papers race through your mind, it’s important to separate the reality from the hype.
The successful technologist won’t approach the marketer with buzzwords. He won’t throw out phrases like “dynamic ontologies” or “semantic triples.” Because good semantic technology is like movie editing — you aren’t supposed to notice it’s there but it fundamentally changes the experience. So when someone approaches you about a “smarter” semantic solution, make sure they can answer this:
How will this make my ads more relevant and my metrics more meaningful?
