A lucid account...
How to create perfect web page content
All you need to do is write a quick spiel covering the basics and you're there, right? Nope... winning web pages are all about getting your direct marketing ducks in a row.
What's direct marketing? It's communicating with your target market in such a way that you drive them towards a positive response, which can mean encouraging site visitors to ask questions, sign up for something or actually make a purchase. So how's it done?
Think of every web page as a perfect mini-story, with a beginning, middle and end.
First, kick the page off with a bold header that encompasses the message you're making on that page. This'll let visitors know, up front and immediately, whether they've landed in the right place to find the information they need.
Second, create your argument in a logical way, heading each paragraph with a sub-header to break up the text and make finding the fine detail easy. Think about what you do when you land on a web page. We don't tend to dive right in and read the whole page from the top downwards. Whether or not we're aware of doing so, the vast majority of us start off by 'scanning' a page briefly to identify the bits we want to find out more about, so using headers and short paragraphs makes the scanning process much easier.
The more time and effort you can save your visitors, the better.
Make sure each header describes what's in the following paragraph simply and clearly, and make every header as interesting and attractive as you can, to encourage people to read in more detail.
Your body copy - the stuff in your paragraphs - should be benefit-focused rather than just covering the features of the stuff you're selling. If you're selling socks, for example, talk about the softness of the wool and how nice it feels on your feet rather than the bare, boring fact that they're made of wool. Benefits invariably sell much better than features.
Use plain English - never blind your poor audience with science and big words - there's no need to be overly clever, just clear and honest. And make your content as interesting, intelligent and relevant as you can. There's no need to go overboard either - say what you need to say in order to give people the information they need to make an informed buying decision, no more and no less.
Lastly it's vital to add a call to action to every page. You might think it's blindingly obvious what you want people to do next, but calls to action make a huge difference to sales conversion and response rates.
Musings on Adobe Muse (Code name)
Designing websites just got a lot more fun, Adobe Muse is now in public beta, well worth a look.
Having had the privilege of being on the private beta for Adobe Muse since February I have really been enjoying getting to know what you can do with it and I have to say for me it's really put the excitement back into designing websites in a much more approachable, intuitive and visual way.
The fact that you can concentrate on your design and leave the code generation to Muse is pretty amazing, it validates and is cross browser compatible from what I've checked, not bad for machine written code! I know this will most likely cause some concern within certain web design circles but more on that later.
As a full Adobe Business Catalyst partner(BC) I am particularly interested in how as Muse develops in conjunction with BC. You already have the ability to add a lot of the cool BC functionality and therefore leverage the power of data capture and the other useful modules but it's still early days, I think we'll see a lot better integration going forward, the Muse team are very proactive.
Of course you don't have use any of the BC features at all, you can export out your site and host it anywhere you like. I have found this useful for creating simple sub-sites and hosting them elsewhere.
I think one of Muse's strong points is the really clean user interface, there's no bloated feature set just useful things in logical places once you've familiarised yourself with the application. As it's now in public beta I'm sure the feature set will grow, there are a few things I would like to see in future releases and I'm sure they'll come but I hope not to the detriment of the interface.
The Muse process is a four step one, Plan, Design, Preview and Publish. The Planning section is where you build out the core structure of your site, you can set-up multiple master pages as required and drag and drop pages onto pages to build the navigation.
In the Design section you set up your header, body and footer section dimensions if you need to and then get on with designing your page, adding elements and image assets as needed.
I'm sure everyone will have different types of workflow using Photoshop or Fireworks etc to create the visuals and then saving out the image elements to be assembled/placed in Muse. I've been playing around designing straight in Muse and it works just fine if you know what you want to achieve in your head or have planned it out on paper.
There's integration with Photoshop placed buttons and images and like other Adobe apps you can edit your images with the original creating app via the assets panel to open whatever image or logo you click on whilst holding down the CTRL key.(Mac) Worth remembering, as this key features a lot in getting to other commands within Muse.
Currently Muse comes with some handy widgets from its widget library, there are some useful standard web elements in here to get you started, and I would think there will be more in time.
- Compositions: Blank, Featured news, Lightbox display, Presentation and Tooltip.
- Menus: Bar, Horizontal and Vertical.
- Panels: Accordion and Tabbed Panels.
- Slideshows: Basic, LightBox and Thumbnails.
All of which are customisable to your hearts content.
There's also some great typographic controls.
The Preview section allows you to see how your pages/site is looking and navigating or you can preview in your default browser. I imagine that a later release will allow you to choose different browsers you may have available. For now you could export the site to your desktop and open the index page with the browser or upload the site and use Adobe Browser Lab.
The last step is Publish, this is where you can log-in to your BC portal if you're already a partner or sign-up for a new account should you wish too. If you don't want to do this you can go to File, Export as HTML and Muse will create a folder with all the relevant structure and files etc where you tell it to, then simply upload to your hosting of choice via FTP and that's it.
Going back to the code that Muse creates, I wrote a post on the Muse portal with my take on this and rather than rewrite it all over again it appears here as well, I'm re-purposing so please excuse a couple of repetitive bits.
Semantic mark-up and well structured code has it's place and all that but I do often wonder who's it actually for, the client or the person that wrote it!
Most clients I deal with wouldn't have a clue what it is and probably wouldn't care much either as long as their site worked, looked good and was found in the first place.
In reality I think if you were to say to most potential clients here's a cost to design and build a site with Muse and here's a cost to hand code the same site semantically only it's three times as much and then explain what the difference actually is, I'm betting most will go for the Muse option.
Speaking as a designer that knows a bit about code (doesn't mean I like it much but I do appreciate the skill of good mark-up) this is where I think Muse is on the money, it's a pleasure to design with and saves a lot of development time. What is also a credit to the skills of the Muse team is that the machine written code that Muse produces actually validates, although I admit that gets a little bit iffy if there's a BC form in there, but you get my drift and I'm sure the integration will get better! (little bias here as I'm a partner on BC!)
I think t.mikael.d's original post is a great idea but I guess in the scheme of things it falls into the nice to have at this point in the Muse development cycle.
I feel that for me, Muse in conjunction with BC does most definitely have the potential to cover most clients needs, it won't always be perfect, I don't think there's such a solution and sometimes it may not be suitable at all but there will always be other alternatives.
Considering what you can now design and develop in a fairly short amount of time with Muse and BC these are powerful tools that allow us to build powerful online businesses for our clients at a fraction of the cost it would have been not that long ago.
Long live semantic hand coded mark up for those business owners that want it and can afford to pay for it. However for those that don't and can't Muse can help get them on the road and I think that can only be a good thing.
So there you have it, my musings on Muse, I think it's a great product that will only get better and better as it moves through the development cycle. It might not be for everyone but for those that choose to give it a go, I think you'll enjoy the experience and hopefully make something you're proud of.
To find out more and to download the beta visit the new public Adobe Muse site here
Turn-key e-commerce solution coming soon!
We are almost ready to launch our turn-key entry level e-commerce solution with all the functionality that the Adobe Business Catalyst platform brings!
You will get a ready to go online business branded for your business which will include the e-mail marketing, customer database, web forms and workflows to mention just a few of the features!
We are aiming this solution at business owners who want to start selling online but have a limited budget to do so or perhaps would like to test the water a bit before committing large amounts on custom design and development.
Currently looking at two payment models, buy outright or lease on a monthly basis with a 12 month contract, this way will hopefully help any start-ups get a foot on the e-commerce ladder.
If you would like to find out more please contact us on 0333 123 7373 or use the contact form.
Bored of Xmas? Top 5 ways to evaluate your ecommerce system!
Have you had enough of Christmas? This is a funny old week. Many companies have shut up shop completely 'til after the new year. Loads of people are on holiday. The seasonal retail frenzy is over. If you find yourself with spare time and never, ever want to lay eyes on another mince pie, why not escape for a while and spend some time evaluating your business website?
Having a few days off means you're probably in a good place to do so without prejudice. With a bit of luck you'll have your holiday head on, which should make it easier to look at your site dispassionately! Here's a quick ecommerce health check for you to follow, our top 5 ways to evaluate an ecommerce site:
- Content management - is your site bang up to date as regards stock, existing and new products, special offers etcetera or has it descended into chaos? If things have got messy you're customers are probably finding the whole experience messy too. Make a list of site updates and get them done before the New Year
- Check your outbound links are working - broken links are offputting for visitors and they can damage trust because you look like you've taken your eye off the ball
- Does your website support your business or have you outgrown it? Make a quick list of the ways your website could work better. Does everything integrate properly or do you suffer hiccups? Are there areas where manual processes could be automated? Are there any weak spots as regards data security or data transfer? Does everything work smoothly and reliably?
- Are you maximising your marketing opportunities? Do you communicate with your customers or just let them skip off into the sunset without so much as a thank you? Do you collect customer feedback? What about autoresponder email campaigns? And how's your site's on-site SEO?
- Are you street legal? Now's a good time to check out stuff like the Data Protection Act and Distance Selling regulations to make sure you comply. If you're selling online, you're engaged in direct marketing. Getting it right from a legal standpoint is good business practice and can even boost sales by encouraging trust
Why settle for less than all-singing, all-dancing B2B website?
There's websites and websites. Yes, you could settle for a simple brochure site. But to be frank, they're well past their sell-by date. Once upon a time successful online businesses were built by replicating the company brochure and not a lot more. Today your online presence needs to work much harder to beat the competition.
From a customer perspective it needs to be active, interactive, informative and attractive. It should engage, inspire, excite and reassure. It should be simple to use and should load super-fast. Your payment gateway and sales process should be seamless. It should let you deal with complaints and issues smoothly and effectively. And it should include a space where people can contribute their opinions, say a blog or forum.
From your perspective it should be easy to manage, control, expand and change. It should make customer aquisition and retention easy for you. It should facilitate direct marketing by collecting data to help you build targeted customer databases and carry out targeted campaigns. It should manage your customer contact stategy for you with autoresponder messages and timed email reminders, special offers and newsletters. And it should let you connect with social media easily. In short it should be a business-in-a-box that doesn't cause you any hassle. Something that works with you rather than making business even more of a challenge.
Does a brochure site do any of that? Nope. It just sits there looking pretty. Nice... but dim. So don't settle for less than an all-singing, all-dancing intelligent online business solution. That's the bunny.
The Connected Kingdom
Here's a video about the growth of e-commerce in the UK for those who prefer their information via video.
I've also added a link here to download the PDF report if you'd prefer to read at your leisure, it makes for interesting reading.
It's the biggest e-market on earth!
6 ways to maximise e-commerce success
E-commerce is an increasingly important part of the world economy. We all know that. But did you realise how important the e-commerce market is to the UK economy? You might be surprised to know we're right at the top of the pile.
We're a tiny island. But recent research shows the UK is the biggest per capita e-commerce market on the planet, and the world's second biggest online advertising market. In 2009 the internet contributed a massive £100,000,000 to the UK economy. That's a whopping 7.2% of our total GDP, much more than construction, transport or utilities. And we export £2.80 for every £1 worth of e-commerce revenue.
Wow! It's obviously a bandwagon worth jumping on! But competition is fierce. So how can businesses like yours maximise the potential of this vast and growing market? Here's six simple ways to boost your e-commerce income:
- Make sure your website works as well as it possibly can from a user perspective with smooth, fast, trusted payment facilities, compelling images, great product descriptions etcetera
- Use SEO – Search Engine Optimisation – or SEM (Search Engine Marketing) techniques to make sure your website is visible to people who search for your kind of goods and services
- Update your website regularly to keep it fresh and current. You wouldn't leave a shop window display unchanged for weeks, so make sure you don't neglect your website
- Price your goods and services so they're competitive. No matter how good your site is, if your pricing is way off the mark you'll have a much harder time converting enquiries to sales
- Set up automated systems for customer acquisition, retention and service. Make sure your customer communications are attractive and clear, relevant and intelligent
- Make sure your site is hosted properly so if you get a sudden big surge in visitors it'll be able to handle things without collapsing
New client site live
Just finishing off the site for The Swallows Cottage. Have a few PHP form problems but should be fine soon.
I'll post a few images once it's all properly live.
Recent Posts
- Local-ness becomes an important marketing factor in the search results
- What is link bait, why is it useful and how do you create it?
- How to create perfect web page content
- The writing's on the quality wall - Google's next algorithm updates
- Why bother with great web design?
- 30 ways to 'do' marketing without social media!
- The power of interaction... and why it's essential for Twitter lead generation
- Google's latest algorithm changes cause SEO consternation!
- A few words about the latest social media phenomenon, Pinterest
- Keeping social media in proportion
