by David Gittin, CTO
Just like everywhere else, trends come and go in the web design world. This rundown is for business owners and marketers and includes some of our favorites. This first post is all about multimedia and interactivity. Many trends got a start in 2014 and are building. Some you’ve seen before, but have been brushed off and cleaned up, and a few really are new. Some old print design ideas have also been freshened up for web. Not included in the the trends is making your site mobile-friendly. Mobile is not a trend. I can’t say it often enough. Mobile is NOT a trend. Accessing the web by smartphone is going to become more and more prevalent. More than half of Google searches are now on mobile (smartphones, not tables), and that number is only going to grow. In fact, among millennials, that number is closer to 90 percent. First up: Multimedia. It’s the biggest trend and growing daily. Multimedia is probably the biggest trend. It isn’t new, but it is becoming ever more important. Our short attention spans demand more than a page full of type and a video and multimedia engages us – Click here! Choose A, B or C! – in a way that simply reading a page full of type no longer does (if it ever did). Our own analytics show that people spend more time on a page they can engage with – video is big and getting bigger all the time, narrated slideshows, and animation are just a few possibilities. By animation I don’t mean the dancing bears that cut-rate ecommerce sites seem to...
by David Gittin, CTO
Everyone likes a good story. We’re conditioned to it from the time our parents told us the story of ourselves, “When you were very small, you would….” Or perhaps we’ve been conditioned to it from prehistoric times, sitting around the fire and sharing stories of how that wooly mammoth was brought down and where the juiciest berries were to be found. Stories serve a useful purpose. Sociologists tell us that the stories of ourselves help us find our place in our family and the world. Anthropologists tell us those early campfire stories shared knowledge so everyone could eat. Whatever the outcome, the purpose was essentially the same: to make a point in an engaging and memorable way. Dan and Chip Heath’s book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, is all about storytelling. All kinds of stories, why to tell them, when to tell them, and what you might expect to happen. Made to Stick opens with a story: the urban legend of meeting someone in a bar, then waking up in an ice-filled bathtub missing a kidney. How could you forget it? Storytelling makes an emotional connection in a way that a lecture never will, whether it’s in print, on slides or in person. You can reach across generations, job functions and demographic groups. You can appeal to different interests. You can illustrate a complex or even controversial concept and make it understood and accepted, as you never will with a dry recitation of facts. Use stories to help a prospect understand how your product can solve their problem. It doesn’t have to be elaborate....
by David Gittin, CTO
Popular children’s television programs such as Sesame Street pioneered the idea of the stickiness factor, in an attempt to maximize the retention of the educational content while not losing its entertainment value. On Sesame Street, Big Bird, Snuffleupagus, and various famous visitors, including James Earl Jones, sing and dance, and teach the alphabet and how to get along. Studies showed that kids who watched an hour a day of Sesame Street performed better in school than the kids who didn’t – all the way through high school. Sesame Street watchers were – and still are – invited to actively respond to what they are seeing on the screen. Kids will call out answers to questions, hop on one foot when invited, and otherwise engage with the content. As Malcolm Gladwell notes in The Tipping Point, stickiness is largely about creating natural engagement. The exact same principles apply in modern marketing. Prospects are, with every action, making decisions on whether or how to proceed with your marketing message. When an average of only 25 percent of a web page is actually read, and the average time spent on a website is a scant 2-3 minutes, you simply do not have enough time to properly engage their viewers with a ‘sticky’ message. You have to get creative in order to catch your viewers’ attention and keep them engaged. The solution is to ease your viewer into educating themselves with highly engaging, interactive content. By having content that invites exploration, you increase viewers’ total engagement time while simultaneously teaching them about your organization and your offerings. That way when they do pick...
by David Gittin, CTO
A linear path through your information is okay if you are selling a simple product. Selling the complex takes more. “Information plays a crucial role in reducing uncertainty and judging alternative options. New information acquisition and analysis methods such as use of the Internet is now common practice”, according to Charles L. Citroen in the International Journal of Information Management. In fact, up to 60 percent of buying decisions are made before a salesperson is engaged, which means your website is being used to inform your buyers. Are you telling them what they need to know? When you offer more depth of information, such as links to photos with layers of information, exploded schematics, and environmental context or you walk your viewer through your process, your buyers are educating themselves. Quality decision-making and effective decision support systems require high quality information, say Edward Shinick and Geraldine Ryan of University College Cork, Ireland. The implicit assumption about decision support systems is that the required information is always available. It’s “out there” somewhere. So, why not on your website or a mini site attached to your website? After they have absorbed all of your information and they are finally ready for a conversation, they have already qualified themselves, making better use of your sales team’s time. Make their time on your site count. Give them...
by David Gittin, CTO
It’s no secret that passively observing information that’s being pushed at us is boring. That’s why our eyes glaze over when watching TV. And why people flee from a website that is just text and pictures with maybe a few video clips. One to one-and-a-half minutes… and they are gone. How much of your carefully crafted information (so many hours! so much money!) do you think they absorbed? When so many decisions to buy are made from people checking and comparing info on websites, it’s time to try something different. It’s time to really engage your audience. Here’s why: 1. People expect it. One minute, maybe one and a half…that’s all of your customer’s time you get. If your site is text heavy, people will spend about 15 seconds. It’s kinda hard to absorb much of your lovingly crafted content in so little time. 2. It improves your SEO. More links on your site makes it easier for search engines to find your site, for instance to forms, webinar registration and archives. 3. Increases time on the site. According to research from AOL, MarketingProfs, and Nielsen, 53% of time spent online is attributable to content consumption and 96% of content consumed and shared is not static. 4. It boosts revenues. When viewers spend more time, they learn more about your product, making it more likely they’ll buy it. Makes sense, right? 5. Interactive sites get repeat visits. See #3. More visits equal more time equals more revenue. Even if your site isn’t e-commerce, it’s still about driving people to buy your product. So, look closely at your content and...
