We all know that colors play an important role for making a website or other marketing content look more attractive, highlighting something for attention and generally making it more appealing to read.  While we’ve all seen good examples of how color enhances websites or marketing materials, it’s not something that you really notice to stop you in your tracks.  Good use of color just makes the experience better without being intrusive.

On the other hand, we’ve all seen bad use of color on websites and other materials that do stop us in our tracks.  Bad use of color with too many different or conflicting colors for elements such as text, lines, borders, highlights, callouts, etc. is an affront to the visual senses – the website looks too busy and you don’t know where to look for the information you want.  While the designer may have thought it would be eye-catching, it’s more a case of being eye-wrenching and tiring on the eyes.

Color is an important and necessary element of good website design.  But how many colors do you really need?  The risk of using too many colors on a website is much greater than the risk of too few. A good basic rule for selecting colors is to choose one primary color that sets the color theme for the website, a highlight color for emphasis and a text color.  A secondary color to complement the primary color can add a good visual effect if used correctly.

Choosing the right color combinations is a well defined science, not a random selection of someone’s favorite colors.  There are lots of color theory and selection resources available on the Internet.  These are common approaches for choosing a good color scheme:

 
Monochromatic – choose a single color with variations in lightness and saturation. A clean, easy to view approach that sets a subtle color theme for a website.
 

 

 
Analogous – choose a primary color plus emphasis and secondary colors adjacent on either side of the primary color.  The colors are harmonious and look richer than monochromatic.
 

 

 
Complementary – choose two colors opposite each other on the color wheel.  This scheme offers the highest contrast and works well for a primary and highlight color approach.
 

 

 
Triadic – choose 3 colors equally spaced on the color wheel.  This provides a balanced approach with harmonious contrast using 3 colors.
 

 
Color also portrays a perceived meaning such as blue for dependable, red for powerful, gold for expensive, yellow for happy, etc.  These perceived meanings have cultural differences too.  Consider these perceived general and cultural meanings when selecting colors to ensure that the colors selected support the message and meaning you want to communicate.

If you already have a corporate or logo color, consider using that as a starting point for selecting your approach and color scheme.

Are your website and marketing material colors off-putting or welcoming for visitors and readers?
Copyright © 2010 Ingistics LLC and Marketance™ www.marketance.com

What does it take to update the content on your website?  Do you have to go through a rigmarole that takes too long and involves technical staff to transform your content into HTML or other code before someone updates the website?  Do you think this is a ridiculous process and that you should be able to directly update your website content without technical assistance?  Absolutely, website content can and should be directly updated by the content owners / providers such as marketers, product managers, business operators, public relations, etc.

Websites used to be developed as static HTML or other code pages where the content was intermingled with the structure, formatting, navigation and other technical aspects.  Any updates to the content would require technical expertise to make the changes and publish the updated website.  Most of us experienced the frustrations, delays and problems with this process.  But that’s history, there is a better way.

Modern websites should be built with a Content Management System (CMS) or more specifically a Web Content Management System (Web CMS).  A Web CMS provides the means to build a dynamic website by separating the content from the other components of a website.  All the website information is stored in a database and the CMS provides content creation, editing, control and website maintenance via a user-oriented web interface.

A Web CMS typically provides the following capabilities:

• A predefined database to store all definitions, content and metadata.
• User management for access and security control for who may create, edit, update, change various areas of the website.
• A presentation layer usually based on templates that define the structure, layout and formatting of the website.
• A navigation layer that defines the menus and navigation of the website.
• Content creation, editing and control via a WYSIWYG interface much like using a regular word processing system.
• Extensions and plug-ins to support capabilities such as RSS Feeds, Polls, Multiple Languages, Calendars, Media, Advertising, eCommerce, etc.
• Most Web CMS provide the necessary capabilities for supporting Search Engine Optimization and Marketing requirements.

And the best part about using Web CMS is that you can get a highly functional, open source system such as Joomla, WordPress, modx, CMS Made Simple and others for free.  This website uses WordPress as its Web CMS – everything on this website is contained and managed in WordPress.

The learning curve to implement an open source Web CMS-based system is quite low with many tutorials and guides available at no or low cost.

How to use this information to benefit your business
If you still have a static website that you can’t dynamically update when and where you want, it’s time to consider moving to a Web CMS for your website:

• Designated end-user content owners / providers can create, edit, control and update the website content when needed without technical assistance or delay.  It’s as simple as the equivalent of a word processing application.
• Multiple people can manage different designated areas of the website.
• The website structure, layout and formatting can be easily updated or changed without impacting the existing content.
• Web CMS provides secure user access control so only authorized persons can update designated areas.
• A Web CMS with available extensions and plug-ins provides expanded capabilities for your website that were previously either unavailable or too costly to consider.
• With Web CMS you can make your website work for your business in the manner you want.  You can keep your website and content fresh and relevant.

Copyright © 2010 Ingistics LLC and Marketance™ www.marketance.com

The basic premise of Social Proof is that people are influenced to do something by what other people are doing. Take a simple example of a tip jar in a coffee shop – if it’s empty, most people won’t leave a tip. But, if the store clerk seeds the jar with several $1 bills, then people see that others are tipping at least $1 and will be influenced to do so themselves.

Robert B. Cialdini has researched and studied the psychology of influence for many years. In his seminal book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion Cialdini defines the 6 “Weapons of Influence” as:

• Reciprocation – give something to get something.
• Commitment and Consistency – people tend to honor commitments.
• Social Proof – people are influenced by what others do.
• Liking – people are more easily persuaded by someone they like.
• Authority – people are inclined to obey an authority.
• Scarcity – the perception of scarcity fuels demand.

An example of Social Proof in action is an experiment Cialdini did with hotel bathroom towels. We’ve all seen the cards placed in hotel bathrooms about the environmental benefits of reusing your towels. Research showed that about 40% of guests reused their towels at least once. Cialdini tested Social Proof influence by changing the message on the cards to ‘The majority of guests who stay in our hotel reuse their towels’. An additional 26% of guests reused towels in response to the revised message.

Marketing and Sales are fundamentally about influence – using marketing to influence people to look at and consider your company/product/service/solution, and then using sales to influence them to buy. Social Proof is a powerful influencer – if people see that others like them are doing it, there’s powerful influence for them to do it too. Two key elements for Social Proof to work are that many others are doing it and that they’re similar to whom you want to influence. The towel experiment communicated this by using ‘majority’ (many) and ‘guests’ (similarity).

The most common use of Social Proof in marketing are testimonials from other customers. Although customer testimonials are good Social Proof influencers, widespread and indiscriminate use in Internet marketing diminishes the influence. There are also such incredulous claims made by some Internet marketers to raise suspicion about the authenticity of their customer testimonials.

How to use this information to benefit your business

• Social Proof is a powerful influencer to use in your marketing and sales programs.
• Use appropriate Social Proofs depending on who you want to influence – ensure that there is appropriate similarity and credibility in the proof provided.
• Consider variations of customer testimonials such as interviews, videos, podcasts, case studies, virtual site visits, etc. to provide the Social Proof in a manner that is relevant and meaningful for your prospective buyers.
• Consider other types of Social Proof besides customer testimonials that may be relevant for your business. Awards, affinity memberships, recommendations by respected authorities, professional certifications and social networking are some examples of other Social Proof you can use.
• Don’t use Social Proof as a sledgehammer to slam out your message. This is about supporting information to influence and persuade buyers.

Copyright © 2009 Ingistics LLC and Marketance™ www.marketance.com

Businesses use websites to market and sell their products/services/solutions. The basic Internet marketing approach is a straightforward 3 step process of attracting visitors to a website by various means, telling them about the relevant stuff once they get to the website, and then getting them to do something. There’s obviously a lot more on how to successfully accomplish each step. The article discusses the 3rd step – what do you want website visitors to do when they’re on your website?

You need great content on each page of your website to provide relevant information to your visitors within their interests and context. The purpose of content is to create a specific takeaway for the website visitor. See the Why your website needs great content article for more information about how to develop high quality content for your website. A takeaway is the impression you want to communicate and what you want your website visitors to know and remember about your business/website/ products/services/solutions. A takeaway is something of interest and value that the website visitor will consider to remember, and/or trigger an idea, and/or start a conversation, and/or make a recommendation.

You also need a call-to-action on each page of your website. The call-to-action is what you want the website visitor to do once they’ve read your content and got the takeaway. Do you want them to buy something, contact you, download a report, sign-up for your newsletter, or whatever? Copy is usually associated with sales letters or sales copy (like those long email promotions) produced by copywriters. However, your website also needs copy to influence and persuade your website visitors to take the desired call-to-action. Use copy to produce a specific result with copywriting techniques.

Content is about the takeaway.  Copy is about the call-to-action.

While the primary composition of most website pages is informational content, it can only be effective if its design and structure creates a takeaway and has elements of copy to produce the call-to-action you want your visitors to take.

How to use this information to benefit your business

• Take a look at your website – is there a clear takeaway and call-to-action on each page?
• Review your competitors’ websites – do they have clear takeaways and call-to-actions on each page?
• How do your competitor takeaways and call-to-actions compare to yours – how can you tune yours to be more appealing and differentiated for your visitors?
• Don’t compromise content with overt call-to-action copy. Website visitors don’t like blatant in-your-face selling.
• Website visitors are primarily looking for information – concentrate on producing great content, but make sure each page has a defined takeaway and call-to-action to make your website produce the results you want.

Remember that the each page of a website should have a specific takeaway and call-to-action.
Copyright © 2009 Ingistics LLC and Marketance™ www.marketance.com

We’ve all heard the Internet referred to as the information superhighway. The information comes from content on various web properties and sources such as websites, blogs, reviews, comments, forums, social media sites, documents, etc. People primarily look for information on the Internet – therefore you need to provide the right informational content to attract people to your website and get them to do something once they’re there.

But you may be thinking, “all I want to do is sell some products or services online – how does content affect me?” That’s the key point – you need great content so that people can find the stuff you want to sell and once found, get information to make an informed and confident decision to buy it. There are probably many other businesses offering the same or similar stuff as your business online – great content is how you get people to find and buy yours rather than theirs.

There are many requirements for producing great website content – the following are 5 that I consider the most important qualities, listed in no particular order:

1. Contextual – the content must be in the language and context of your customers and prospective buyers. The message must be about what it means to them and how they will benefit. It’s not about your product/service/solution – it’s about how your buyers can solve a problem, overcome a challenge, embrace an opportunity, fulfill a need, etc.
2. Readable – there are specific techniques for writing web content – see the How to write great content for your website article for details. The content needs to be relevant and appropriate to deliver the right quantity and quality of information so that the website visitor isn’t left hanging looking for more, or overwhelmed with screeds of details.
3. Findable – having great content is worthless if nobody finds it. Do some research to determine what keywords people are using on search engines to find what you offer. The Google Keyword Tool is a good resource for doing this. Include these keywords and key phrases in your content and meta tags so that search engines can find and link to the relevant page on your website.
4. Expeditious – website visitors are impatient – they have limited attention spans and want to get the information quickly. Make the content scanable, so they can tell whether it’s what they’re looking for after a quick scan of the page. Then facilitate quick and easy reading with succinct content. And get to the point you want to get across sooner rather than later.
5. Actionable – once someone has read a particular piece of content on your website, what do you want them to do? The information should lead them to making a decision or taking the action you want. Every unit of content should have a take-away (what you want them to remember) and a call-to-action (what you want them to do).

How to use this information to benefit your business

• Website content is your contribution to the information superhighway. Does the information superhighway sufficiently recognize your website content and send travelers your way?
• Do a review of your website – score a good representative sample of your pages on the 5 key qualities listed above. Where and how can you improve your content to boost results for your website?
• Remember that search engines index web pages individually – you need great content on every page.
• If you sell products on your website, each product should have relevant and complete informational content – not just product name and ordering options.
• You’ve heard the expression “content is king” – it’s true, every aspect of your website performance is directly related to the quality of the content. Make your business website content king of your competitive heap.

Copyright © 2009 Ingistics LLC and Marketance™ www.marketance.com

Which websites do you visit regularly? What makes these websites interesting and attractive for you to keep returning? Content is always a major factor – information that is accessible, easy to read, informative and relevant to your interests. This didn’t happen accidentally, someone took the time to write and structure the content in a manner that is appealing to web readers. Having information that is interesting for an audience is only the starting point – delivering it in an appealing format that people actually want to read is the real key to attracting regular visitors who read your web content.

Content for the web has its own style and formatting to align with how people find, browse and read information on the Internet. Just because someone can write a good technical manual, or press release, or journal article, or short story, or for any other media; doesn’t mean they can write good web content. This is a mistake too many businesses make – using writers trained for a different medium or audience to write web content. These writers can certainly learn to write good web content, but the rules are different.

There are many opinions and continuing research about writing effective web content. Always consider the following methods for writing great web content:

• Information on a web page should be visually appealing and inviting for the website visitor to pause and want to read the content.
• The page must be scanable – studies show that most people scan a web page picking out bits of information. Some may pause to read the content if the scan grabs their attention; others may get the gist of the content from the quick scan.
• Each page is about one topic. The beauty of the web is that you can interlink related topics on other pages without muddling multiple topics on one page.
• Avoid a wall of words – no one wants to read a page of dense text.
• Don’t add irrelevant graphics or other cutesy elements to make a page seemingly more attractive. It doesn’t compensate for poorly written content.
• Make good use of white space to separate lines, paragraphs, sections, borders, etc. to make the page more appealing and the content easier to scan and read.
• Use concise and visible sub-headings to define a paragraph or section content.
• Use bulleted or numbered lists to succinctly communicate key points. Web readers like lists.
• Emphasize key words or points with bold text to facilitate scanning and highlighting the key points.
• Use call-outs to highlight something of particular interest. There are various call-out styles such as in-line boxes, sidebars, quote boxes, etc. that work well.
• Start with a succinct introduction that posits the conclusion and then expand to explanatory details. This is the opposite of most academic approaches for writing that start with a base assumption and gradually builds through the details to a conclusion.
• Keep paragraphs short in easily consumed chunks around one thought.
• Use easy to read, high school level vocabulary.
• Use plain language – avoid marketese, technospeak, sales copy or other mumbo jumbo.
• Grammar and spelling matter – always do a thorough spelling and grammar check. Readers will generally excuse a few minor mistakes that still slip through, but poor grammar and spelling is unprofessional and reflects negatively on your business.
• Avoid humor – unless your business is about humor. You don’t know the personal tastes, cultural backgrounds, affiliations and perceptions of your readers. You can inadvertently offend a group of prospective buyers with humor.
• Use an engaging conversational style of writing.

See the Why your website needs great content article for information about the 5 key qualities for structuring and producing great web content.

How to use this information to benefit your business

• Review your website content – does it effectively communicate your information by using these web content methods?
• Who writes your web content – are they writing your content specifically for the web?
• Have you spoken with customers to find out how they like your web content?
• Improving your web content can directly improve your website performance and business results.

Copyright © 2009 Ingistics LLC and Marketance™ www.marketance.com

Many B2B and technology companies require website visitors to register by providing full contact information before they can access some materials on their websites. This registration process is usually required for the worthwhile content such as product datasheets, demos, white papers, etc. that website visitors really want to see.

This is incredulous – many of these companies provide mostly marginal, self-centered information on their web pages and then lock away the information their website visitors came to get in the first place. It’s not the crown jewels or their product secrets – it’s just marketing materials.

Even more disturbing are the somewhat deceptive links to these materials; usually stating something like “download this white paper now”, or “view the datasheet for more details”, or “view the product demo” or something like that without a “registration required” qualification.

From a website visitor’s perspective this registration requirement to see certain material is contradictory to expectations. These businesses drew the visitors to their website by some Internet marketing means. There’s nothing in this practice that’s good for website visitors. There is no fair exchange of value. There is no WIIFM (what’s in it for me) for these potential buyers. It gives them the impression that they’re dealing with an impersonal company that makes things difficult for their customers.

We all know why marketers at these companies do this – to add the contact information to their database so they can email marketing stuff and add to their marketing statistics for management reporting.

There are many good tools available to track downloads and the use of downloaded materials that don’t require registration. Inserting links to videos or other additional materials in the downloaded material can track usage. There are better ways to fulfill marketing statistics and better track material usage without annoying or chasing your website visitors away. There are more welcoming ways to get potential buyers to sign up for permission marketing.

There are various anecdotal reports that up to 95% of website visitors abandon websites or enter bogus information when confronted with a registration form. MarketingSherpa’s 2009 Business Technology Marketing Benchmark Guide, indicates that after reading white papers, engineers typically visit the vendor’s website (70%), contact the vendor (45%) or pass the white paper to a peer (37%).

How to use this information to benefit your business

• Website visitors, customers and buyers loathe this registration practice. If you are doing it or planning to do it, review the implications and consider alternatives.
• If you do require registration for accessing some information, review your bounce rate in tools like Google Analytics. If visitors are getting to the registration form page(s) and then leaving or providing bogus contact information, you have a problem with the registration requirement.
• There is substantial evidence that indicates you can get significantly more people to view these materials and more subsequent qualified traffic by not requiring registration.
• Registrations are fine when there is a fair exchange of value such as providing no cost educational materials or reports. However, requiring registration for website visitors to view more detailed information about a company’s products/services/solutions is self-defeating.
• Even if a website user relents and registers because they really want to see the material, doesn’t mean they’re going to be receptive to an email marketing onslaught.
• Registration requirements are a good way to kill your business website and drive potential buyers to competitors or social media sources to get the equivalent information. They came to your site looking for the information – don’t blow the opportunity for prospective buyers to consider buying from you.

Copyright © 2009 Ingistics LLC and Marketance™ www.marketance.com

While working on a project that had me browsing through a number of business software vendor websites, it struck me how often the information presented was from the vendor’s perspective. The websites were full of “we do…”, “we can…”, “we have…”, “we are…”, “our product…”, “our staff…”, “our technology…”, “we provide…”, “Companyname has…”, “Companyname is…”, etc. – you get the picture – it’s all about the vendor. I wasn’t specifically looking at their content writing style, but it was rather noticeable after a few sites and several pages.

Not wanting to be judgmental without supporting evidence, I remembered reading about Roy Williams asking “Are you wewe-ing all over yourself?”. So then I found this WeWe Monitor from FutureNow that analyzes whether a website or other content, speaks about the customer or themselves. Next step was to enter the information for the software vendors’ websites I’d been looking at, to see how they ranked.

The average Self Focus Rate for 10 major business software vendors is approximately 88% – i.e. they speak about themselves 8 times more often than they speak about their customers or buyers on their websites. How do these vendors think that comes across for customers and prospective buyers? It’s all about them, not about their customers or buyers. One well-known major software vendor scored 96% which means they speak about themselves 22 times more often than they speak about their customers or buyers. So the impression I got while reading through these websites that they were self-centered and inside-out, seems substantiated.

These disappointing results got me wondering who has better ratings in this category. So I ran a list of 10 smaller business software vendors’ websites through the WeWe Monitor. The average Self Focus Rate for these vendors is approximately 78% – a better average score, but a mixed bag. 3 of the 10 vendors had 100% Self Focus Rate (they only speak about themselves), one had an excellent 33% and another had 52%.

While the authors of the WeWe Monitor state that “a score between 60% – 70% seems to have the most natural tone”, I think that’s way too high. IMO a score of 33% would be a good customer oriented tone – which means speaking about customers and buyers twice as much as yourself.

How to use this information to benefit your business
Connecting with customers and buyers in their context and language to identify with their challenges, opportunities or needs is a critical requirement for effective marketing and websites.

• Run your website and marketing materials through the WeWe Monitor to see how you score.
• Run your competitors websites and materials through the WeWe Monitor to see how they fare.
• How do you compare?
• Review competitive websites and materials with good scores to see how they connect with customers and buyers.
• Have someone else review your website and marketing materials and provide objective feedback.
• You should revise your materials if your Self Focus Rate is higher than 50%.
• I would recommend aiming for a 33% score, but anything less than 50% is reasonable.
• View the ‘Successful Marketing is Outside-In’ article for more information about a customer focused tone for your website and marketing communications.

Copyright © 2009 Ingistics LLC and Marketance™ www.marketance.com

Content marketing is the approach for delivering marketing materials that are informative and educational to reach and engage specific groups of customers and prospective buyers. The content is delivered in a choice of media formats including websites, white papers, newsletters, articles, eBooks, reports, video and other materials. These materials are designed to communicate in a non-selling approach by providing information that educates prospective buyers about a product/service/solution that does or should interest them.

How can I use Content Marketing to market my business?
Today’s buyers are more informed than ever before.  They use various internet sources to gather information and guidance for making purchasing decisions. Research shows that most buyer-seller interactions are initiated by buyers based on information readily available to them. You need good and relevant content that is readily available and accessible through various content marketing channels, for prospective buyers to find you and consider your product/service/solution.
View more information about Content Marketing.
Copyright © 2009 Ingistics LLC and Marketance™ www.marketance.com