"WEBMARKETING
TIPS"
Less is More: Streamlining Your Site
Some time back I beefed that too many web sites
didn't have enough words to explain their
offers. "Some sites are all pictures with very
little copy. It's hard to figure out what the
site is selling and why you should buy it," I
complained.
Now it looks like a lot of sites have gone the
other direction. In an
effort to maximize sales, they put dense copy
about all their offers on the opening page of
their site.
Did we overdo it?
The latest thinking among advertising experts is
a page filled with lots and lots of copy is
jarring. People click to the page and think
"Gee! I don't have time to read all this."
It's often better to trim your opening page
offers down to just your most essential
elements. Some big corporate sites are moving to
this philosophy of "less is more." See
http://www.thinkfree.com for an almost
extreme example.
Bottom line: the customer is pressed for time.
Many are surfing the Net while on their lunch
break or between office chores. If they can't
figure out your offer quickly, they may click
elsewhere.
So keep your paragraphs SHORT. Sales copy should
rarely use paragraphs longer than three
sentences. One and two sentence paragraphs work
great.
Short chunks of copy separated by white space
immediately say
"get this information fast." You can use these
shorter paragraphs not only for high-impact web
copy, but sales letters, email, and ad copy.
And it's not just customers who like shorter
copy: recently an editor of a major national
magazine told me he favors articles with two and
three sentence paragraphs. The look of the
article is almost as important as what it is
about.
Once your copy is lean and mean, what to do with
your graphics? As browsers get more
sophisticated and modems download faster, web
sites are getting fancier. My old advice about
"put a logo at the top of your web page and keep
the rest `text'" is looking out-dated.
On the other hand, MANY of your web site
visitors have slow phone lines with no
improvement in the near future. With web design
expectations higher but lines still slow, it
puts many of us between a rock and a hard place.
Some ways to jazz up the look of your pages
without making them slow loading:
1. Use one to three SMALL gif or jpeg graphics
on a page, but don't go overboard. Try to repeat
graphics when you can from one page to the next.
Once a graphic has loaded into the visitor's
computer, it doesn't have to load again.
2. Create an interesting page by formatting your
text into headlines,
bold, indented blocks, and limited colored text.
You can also set off
important points with small graphic balls or
arrows. These don't take much time to load and
can add interest to your page.
3. Put parts of your page in a cell and give it
a different background
from the rest of your page.
4. When you find a logo you like, email the
owner and ask who created it. I find that many
site owners create their logo themselves and
don't mind making one for you at low cost.
5. Plenty of white space is good. Rather than
having a batch of graphics on the opening page,
you might focus on one larger more powerful
graphic that unifies the page.
Great sites are easy to use and full of just the
kind of information
you're looking for. Include content that makes
your best customers and prospects say "Wow!"
Respect the limited amount of time they have to
spend on your site and make it easy for them to
figure out how to buy from you.
SK Kor
Internet Marketing Consultant
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