Driving Traffic to Your Website that Talks to You
Every morning I stop by a coffee shop to get my favorite tea. I have to drive through a newer shopping center in the suburbs to get there. Before the shopping center was constructed, engineers considered traffic flow and planned how the streets would be laid out. From a bird’s eye view, I am sure the streets make perfect sense; there is one main street that forms a semi-circle coming off the existing highway. Drives come off of the semi-circle street like legs off a centipede, feeding traffic into the parking areas. The problem is the centipede does not have enough legs, so traffic is chronically backed up. It backs up into the parking area and people are stuck in their parking spaces. Some of the centipede drives are “Entrance Only,” meaning you cannot turn out, which forces traffic to block up. Drivers must wait and become frustrated. Inevitably, frustrated people start ignoring the signs and do what they want to do.
I like using traffic analogies when talking about websites. The parallels are natural; people navigating to get to where they want to go. Engineers, be they civil or computer, ideally design systems that minimize crashes. In the end though, the users take control and anything can...
Don’t Include eMarketing in Next Years Budget
What you should include is a line item for imagination. The Web 2.0 tools and services can be used for a powerful eMarketing campaign with very modest budgets. You see, some of the most successful eMarketing campaigns are not about big budgets but rather about interesting hooks. What you need to do is open your mind and let the creative juices flow to tell your company’s story. By doing so, you can hit all of your 2009 marketing milestones including enhancing your search engine rankings, driving relevant traffic to your site and demonstrating your skill while expressing your firm’s personality…
Intranets that Communicate, Collaborate and Innovate
Recently I was sitting in a room of people trying to decide what information they wanted to put on their company intranet site. This was a group of managers who were nominated to form the intranet committee. Sitting in a closed door room they were reviewing item by item of what they thought their teams would find useful. They were practical, intelligent people yet not once did anyone say lets go back to the team and learn what information they need easy access to…