Posts Tagged ‘advertising’

Like it or not, the pace of the world we live in isn’t slowing down one bit. It just keeps going faster, and faster. Thanks to our wonderful friend Technology, the more empowered we are to be able to do things quicker, the quicker we want them done.

Before the telegraph, people accepted postal services as a reasonably fast way to communicate. At least it was easier than travelling to deliver messages yourself. Along comes the telegraph in the early 1800s and all of a sudden postal mail is inferior. So then in 1876 Alexander Graham Bell creates the telephone. Within a couple of years there are telephones all over the place and folks just can’t be bothered to use a telegraph—it’s too slow. The telephone evolves as switchboard operators are replaced by electric switchboards. But rotary dialling is too slow, so it’s replaced with touch-tone dialling. Trying to catch people when they’re at the phone is annoying, so answering machines and voice mail hit the scene. Finding a payphone when you’re on the road or being unreachable while travelling is such an inconvenience—it’s a good thing cell phones exist. But sometimes speaking isn’t good enough. You just have to be able to transmit written words. Well the fax machine was an amazing invention until the world wide web brought us electronic mail. And thanks to Blackberrys and other smart phones, the convenience of e-mail can be combined with the portability of a cell phone. And so it keeps evolving.

Where am I going with all that?

As people’s lives speed up, they become accustomed to spending less time doing each of the tasks they do. This poses a problem for advertisers.

Basically, it all boils down to a society of shortened attention spans. But there are a few solutions. The most obvious is to simply advertise more quickly. Short sound-bites on the radio, quick messages on billboards, simple newspaper ads with an emphasis on image rather than words, etc.

One of the greatest advantages to advertisers of the internet versus traditional means of advertising is the ability to present large amounts of information at a low cost. But this can be one of the greatest problems with trying to advertise using a website if it’s not approached smartly—with consideration for the aforementioned shortened consumer attention span.

Here are some suggestions for making your website an effective advertising tool.

(Note: This post is not about successfully driving people to your website. It’s about making their visit worthwhile to you once they’re there.)

1. Dynamic Content Done Right

What is dynamic content? It’s content that changes. It’s blog posts that are frequently updated. It’s photo galleries in which new photos are added all the time. It’s weekly specials and event notices and anything else that changes on a regular basis. How do you do it right?

Make it relevant. People won’t be fooled by posting rubbish to your blog. Last week I wrote about giving customer’s a piece of your mind. Do it on your website.

Make it interesting. Nobody wants to see photos of your office party, (unless it got particularly wild). But they just might be up for seeing images of your staff in action delivering your services or interacting with your community. Or of customers enjoying the benefits of your products. (Make sure you have their permission before you post them on the web.)

2. Prioritize Information Accessibility

Determine what information people might want to be able to find quickly, and make that easy. This might be pricing information, contact information, or product comparisons.

Websites allow you to go into great detail about what you’re offering. That detail should be just another click away. But by prioritizing your information, you allow visitors to quickly find what they’re looking for before they could lose interest, and you make them feel empowered by letting them choose when to go further and learn more.

3. Call to Action, Call to Action, Call to Action

If you want people to take action, you have to ask them to. Use words like, “click here,” “start now,” and “learn more” to implore visitors to take another step. As long as they feel like they’re still doing something, they’ll stick around. If they land on the site and there’s just a bunch of reading to do, they’re unlikely to stick around for long. But if they’ve being lead down a path toward an objective, they’re more likely to keep exploring.

4. Interactivity

Making your website feel interactive for your visitors doesn’t have to be difficult. You don’t need fancy flash animation or complex site applications.

Polls allow visitors to voice their opinion with a click of a button, and to find out how their opinion compares to those of others. They give the visitor something to do, which keeps them on your site longer and therefore thinking about you longer, and they can provide valuable statistical information for you!

If your website has a blog, let people post comments. This can get a dialog started that will give you ideas for future blog posts, or even for ways to change the way you do business to better serve your clients.

Forums can serve a variety of purposes. They allow people to express opinions, to seek advice, to debate, to share their expertise, and so on. Having a forum on your site can generate repeat visitors as people post and then come back looking for responses. A carefully moderated forum can be a great, unobtrusive way for you to interact with your visitors too.

Here are some other things you might want to include on your website to increase its appeal to visitors with short attention spans:

Videos or even just slideshows are fairly easy to imbed into your site. These types of multimedia presentations appeal to the senses of people who prefer to learn or gain information from listening or watching rather than just reading.

Customer testimonials and responses on your site help visitors to relax by making them feel as if they’re being shown how good something is, rather than just told. If you tell someone you’ve got a rockin’ good product, they’ll question your motive. If someone else says it rocks, they’ll be more likely to listen.

Now you have some ideas for how to get people to stick around on your website. But what good is that if they don’t take it to the next step and connect with YOU instead of just your website? I’ll talk about that next week…