Web Critic

As an example…an online clothing website.

1. The copy is centred around the features of the product…no lifestyle or aspirational copy.

2. No Calls To Action  (CTA)

3. The page titles are the same…written in blue at the very top of your monitor.

4. No staff photos or “Helpline personnel” on the site

5. Using your bank’s payment gateway, not your own customised one.

That’s just 5 mistakes but Jo Public and Jo The Ad Man are very creative and continue to come up with new ways to make a mess of websites.

If you think it’s like print or even a bit like print and you think this web stuff can’t be that difficult, call me and tell me that you have been more successful then me. 9 out of 10 web sites are suffering from an Internet Tragedy and Google can tell you what that is.

Stop mucking about and get some proper advice! Or you can always stick knitting needles in your eyes, it’s nearly as painful as having a lousy website but it’s not as expensive.

You have a choice.

Till soon…

TWC,

I saw some questions the other day about sticky websites.

Sticky websites are great and do stop people leaving too quickly. Yes, they have given the user a good experience and probably they will come back…you can always check your site stats to see how many of your web visitors have bookmarked your site.

Sticky websites are really good for social networking sites (web 2.0) and product or service researchers. Lead generation websites are for product buyers and this is when you help them to select a product, pay and go. Typical drop out rates between Add to basket and the Checkout  are over 50%…that’s more than 50% of your visitors leaving their basket in an aisle and legging it out of the door! Maybe the checkout was sticky! It happens a lot…poor design of the checkout area is almost standard on many websites…just when you have got the customer to select a product and put it in their basket, you blow it! …Why? Often it’s because the E-commerce techies and web designers can only see it from a position of Recall, not Recognition. That usually means poor usability and high drop out rates. Stickiness keeps them there but it’s a lot of other factors that get them to spend or take an action…and that’s when you have a successful commercial website!

Some parts of a site should be sticky for researchers and social networkers and some parts need to be slippy, quick and easy for the product seekers.

You can’t justify any investment in a website without the promise of a financial return.

Yours profitably,

Till soon,

TWC

You can send anything you like in the post, by email, by smoke signal or by video. But are they receiving it?

YouTube specifically recommend the MPEG4 format (DivX, Xvid), a common compressed video format at 320×240 resolution with MP3 audio. YouTube deliver video at 200kb/s in Flash Video (.flv) As a guide, this is 40 times smaller than a commercial DVD.

So a short uncompressed video at standard definition is not even close to being suitable for delivery from the web/website…just too large! Nobody has the patience to download 100s of MB of video or tolerate endless buffering, so present it nicely please!

Decision time…you must either scale the video down in a video editing suite like Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro and deliver via the web… or if very high quality is essential, use good old disc media.

And then there is the receiving of this information. If it’s a corporate client that’s receiving it, check that they have Flash or Quick Time installed. A high percentage of corporate servers and PCs don’t allow it to be installed so they can’t watch it.

The web is  great for sending many things but please understand and check that the client can receive them. The web still has some way to go!

After all, it’s about them, not you.

Till soon,

TWC

Form follows function? Not even remotely likely if you are an ad agency.

Ad agencies really have got a big problem with understanding the new technology of the web. For them it is still a question of pushing creative image and design through the new medium of the web. Ad agencies have failed to understand the vast difference between push and pull marketing.It is wholly inappropriate to try and deliver old marketing messages through the new medium of the web.

Why, oh why is that then? Before I even get to disability and partially sighted access websites, let’s just think about what a website is for…It could be brand reinforcement, lead generation, e-commerce or plain old info sites. It’s not just to “show off” one’s own creative talents. I have yet to find an Ad agency with a decent website that conveys an appropriate corporate image. OK, they may want to be a creative looking company but as a corporate customer, I’m looking for a corporate partner that understands ROI and business strategy, not fancy designs from the kid just out of college.

So the ad agencies continue to put up their creative looking websites. There is a famous Leeds based agency that has broken all the rules of convention, accessibility and usability. Their site is all in Flash so that means a high percentage of corporate clients will not see it. Why? Because many companies will  not install flash on their servers. Flash is for streaming voice and video, not for watching a half rate presentation that deserves the “Skip Intro” treatment. Just how many times have you Skipped Intro? Many ad agencies will get their whole site skipped by website visitors.

As a company’s brand depends on what customers feel, see and think about you, do the ad agencies just want to be regarded as creative only? It must be…they are not projecting anything else, not even website functionality.

C’mon ad agencies, get to grips with what it’s all about! …try and present some other sides to your precious image. Mono images are dull.

Till soon,

TWC

The last bank holiday is over and my coding genius partner is lost in The Lake District… his stag weekend…I hope he has some brain cells left.

Found a site today for care homes for the old. It looks like a great place to be looked after. I suppose it’s the middle aged ‘children’ that have to find and organise care for their elders but the future residents of a home should be able to have a look themselves, Disability access (eg dyspraxia and head stick users) and accessible website for the partially sighted are now the law. Ignore this, lose business and get fined. This applies in both the commercial world for able bodied people and especially where it’s  needed most!

I had this conversation with an online clothes company…they got stuck on why won’t you sell a smart suit to a partially sighted man?

No naming and shaming today…maybe I haven’t got everything right myself. All comments appreciated.

Till soon

TWC