This joke says it all: The theory that a million monkeys typing for a million years could reproduce the works of Shakespeare has been disproven by the internet.

Good writing doesn’t happen by chance. And clever web text takes even more planning. With limited space and dwindling attention spans, how can mere words captivate your audience amidst all those striking graphics and kinetic flash?

They don’t have to. Instead, they should integrate seamlessly into your site. Today, websites are less about information and more about experience. Good websites are a blast to visit. And the great ones are designed so well, with everything meshing so perfectly, that when you leave you sit back in your chair, light a cigarette, and say Gawd, that was good.

Writing is one important part of that experience. And it’s often overlooked when creating that web experience. Good writers look at their words as another design element. I once worked for a multimedia company that designed the website for Saturn. Not the planet, but the auto company. Saturn exudes a sense of community, and they wanted their website to reflect it. Words were a crucial part of their earthy, “We Are Family” web experience.

Words paint pictures. Think not? Let’s do a little test. Say you’re a web developer trying to sell yourself. Read the following sentence and tell me what you think: “Our web services are top-notch, our employees really care about their work, and we’ll create a great website for you.” Petty boring. Now this: “Our inventive designers customize glittering websites for your target market with a fresh understanding of marketing niches that apply creative, winning solutions.” Which company do you hire?

Creating great web text is actually simple: be brief, add pizzazz, and know your audience.

Rule #1: Be Brief

We’ve all visited websites so overwhelmed by text that we face a sea of alphabetical mumbo-jumbo. Yuck. The experience is ruined the moment the page loads.

Be brief. Be pithy. Most of all, don’t be tiresome or dull. If visitors want more information, link to another page and keep that brief. Typically, 250-300 words per page is enough to say what you want, especially for company information or employee bios. Less is definitely more. If you can’t shorten your web text… find a someone who can.

Rule #2: Add Pizazz

Words are more fun than Silly Putty. They cajole, persuade, entice, and flatter. The right words can stop a war or start a romance. Try writing a love letter without them.

Your website text should have the same style and flair as a love letter. Hire a professional. And I don’t mean a shrink, although some psychologists can really write. The spicy phrase, the lilting sentence, or the sizzling metaphor incite your virtual visitors to action.

And don’t forget humor. Laughter makes everything go down smoother. How do you think we got comedy traffic schools? It’s certainly not because cops have a sense of humor.

Charm, dazzle, and humor your visitors with words that soar off the screen.

Rule #3: Know Your Audience.

This rule could also be “Know your experience.” Are you trying to create bouncy, lively interactions for curious kids? A dizzying array of sights and sounds for hyperactive teens? Or a steady, calming experience for community-minded car buyers? Whatever the design, your words should enhance and embellish the moment. Your writer should be involved in the planning process to take full advantage of your site’s gorgeously integrated design.

By focusing on text as an essential part of your blissfully integrated website, you create a completely immersive experience for your visitors. They’ll be happily amused, engaged, and fulfilled … and so will your bottom line.

Posted in Marketing, Web Design

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It seems there are quite a few people out there that just don’t “get it” when it comes to blogging. Rand at SEOmoz wrote A Lot of People Have to Die for Corporate Blogging to Succeed. Many organizations require 3 levels of proofing before any communication can go out killing the creativity and excitement that goes into blogging.

BlogWrite for CEOs seems to justify blogs or promote their uses every 3 posts or so.

Church of the Customer points out the single greatest value to blog and gives 7 reasons small business should blog.

Mary Schmidt explains how blogging isn’t “playing on the computer” (something my wife accuses me of).

And I’ve seen several other similar posts over the last couple weeks.

I’m going to make this real simple: If you want more customers or want to improve the customer experience for your business get a website. If you want to take that to the next level, add a blog.

Blogs draw traffic and create unique networking opportunities. Yes you can use them to engage your ego or express yourself or *whatever* but the results speak for themselves.

I will continue to urge my clients to add blogs when appropriate. And I will continue to keep this one running as best I can.

For anyone unwilling to take two minutes to Google the value of blogging I just have this to say: Thank you for your customers.

Is that enough justification?

Posted in Customer Service, Promotion, Industry News, Marketing, Web Design

3 Comments »

With the holiday’s coming my wife and I have been watching the Food Network a lot. Today she asked me how the Food Network’s website makes money when they sell cookbooks but give away free recipes.

FoodNetwork.com actually makes money several ways but I want to talk about their overall strategy for a moment: drive traffic from the website to the television. The Food Network makes most of its money by selling ad time during its TV programming. The website is just a compliment to the TV shows although it is clearly above average.

Maybe a better way to say it is the Food Network’s website is done right. It advertises to people who are online and supports people that come from the TV shows looking for more detailed information.

Foodnetwork.com is HTML compliant. It is also well-optimized for the search engines including use of the canonical fix. Almost every page has some form of bookmark-bait or link-bait.

Even though the site makes good use of technology, the Food Network’s website is built for people. The navigation is easy to use and obvious. The site is attractive. Information most people need is right upfront on the home page including the daily schedule, suggestions for shows to watch, the current holiday theme (Thanksgiving 101), highlights and useful links. The text even resizes well for people that increase the font size due to visual problems!

On the marketing end, foodnetwork.com owns and redirects food.com which helps build the brand. But on to the money.

While foodnetwork.com is built as an adjunct to their TV network the site itself is set up to make money several ways. There are ads on the home page including links to their own store. They also have affiliate ads for shopzilla and Stove Top stuffing, a Kraft Foods product.

When you look at the navigation the Store is the primary link encouraging click-throughs. TV comes second. On the TV page an annoying Flash-over ad for a survey site appeared for me (hopefully they ditch these ads as they are somewhat trashy in comparison with the level of class associated with the rest of the site). There are “sponsored by” links including Oscar Meyer.

On the Cooking page a searchable ad for Kraft Foods appears to help you find recipes. The ads color and style reflects the rest of the Food Network site making it blend in well and appear to be part of the content (there is a light gray “advertisement” marker above it that is easy to miss). This is a common way to boost click-throughs as the average web surfer probably won’t even realize they are being directed to a different site!

Note: The redirect on the ad took me to a page that “could not be found” - oops!

In fact every page has some type of off-site advertising from banner ads to “sponsored by” links - even Adsense ads appear on the deeper pages. Some ads are more blatant than others. Some are better targeted than others, especially when you are within the top 3 clicks of the home page. But almost every ad is food-related, even one from Wal-Mart that I spotted! Most pages have just one ad giving the advertiser a better value and ROI.

The Tasty Travel page changes the rules a bit implementing more ads and calls to the store. Interior pages also contain multiple ads. And some of the advertising is travel related (like the Hyatt resorts ad I saw) instead of food-related.

The Kitchen Design page is actually a link to HGTV’s Kitchen Design another Scripps Network property (Scripps owns the Food Network as well as DIY and Fine Living). Links to the other Scripps sites are also in the footer of each page (along with affiliate links to Shopzilla and Bizrate).

Finally, there is the Videos page which is Flash-driven and requires Windows Media Player. It streams videos on load starting with a commercial. In fact all the videos start with a commercial.

Food Network has done a great job serving their audience and monetizing their website without too many unnecessary interruptions (the major exception being the Flash-over on the TV page). They keep the site customer-focused and careful ad management has helped their advertisers get a valuable purchase. And all of this is done while pushing viewers to the TV shows, building the brand and reputations of the talent and encouraging viewers to shop at the store.

Posted in Reviews, Promotion, Marketing, Web Design

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Whether you are an amateur web designer or a pro developer getting someone else’s opinion about your website can bring valuable insight improving its look and effectiveness. There are a few things I’ve learned about this process I thought I should share here.

Be clear about what you are asking for. Most websites that offer review services cater to a broad crowd of specialists. General inquiries don’t get a very good response and often leave you without any real information to improve your site. Before you ask, decide what you want to know about. Possibilities include:

• Aesthetics
• Content
• Compliance (W3C, accessibility, etc.)
• Search engine crawlability
• Promotion
• Tactics
• Topic(s)
• All pages finished
• Formatting issues
• Consistency
• Navigation

Be humble. The people reviewing your site are spending their valuable time to help you out. Acknowledge and appreciate it! Getting defensive makes them wonder why they bothered in the first place.

Implement the suggestions you get. If you get a list of 5 things you must do to improve your site (and you asked for it) make it happen. If you ask for help and then don’t take the advice given there is no incentive to “help” you in the future - even if you really are “super-serious this time”.

Know when you are right. If you have a specific and clear reason why a part of your site is the way it is don’t change it just because someone thinks it isn’t right. The people reviewing your site are doing you a favor but you have to live with it. You know your viewers and direction better than anyone else - trust yourself. But do take the time to explain if this comes up.

Ask the right people for help. Different websites attract different types of users. Some sites are better at reviewing certain aspects than others. For example, asking for a review of your aesthetics at a PHP programming forum will probably be useless (most programmers think only 4 colors are needed for any project: Black, gray, white and blue). I suggest SEO Refugee’s Free Site Review for any concerns about SEO and Cre8asite’s Website Hospital for usability and “human” issues.

Read the rules. Some sites have different ways of operating than others. Some want your title to have specific words in it so everyone knows you want a review. Others want the URL. Every site that has these requirements makes it easy to find them. Be sure to follow them so the discussion is about how to improve your site instead of why they should be bothered to help if you can’t be bothered to read.

Get an offline opinion. A really great way to test your site is to have an internet novice surf it in front of you. Warning: You may be shocked by the results!

Posted in Reviews, Marketing, Web Design

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It has come to my attention that I could be doing a better job with my copywriting on this blog. For example, when I wrote about the Alexa interface update the other day and then Donna did the same her title - Alexa has a sexy new traffic rankings UI - was much better.

Last month I announced a tool that solves the canonical issue with the search engines. Of course most people don’t know what that means… even SEOs. A better approach may have been something more like…

We all know links act as votes when it comes to search engine rankings. But what do you do when a search engine only counts half your links? Odds are, this is happening to you!

The search engines see two versions of your site. The first is the regular domain.com and the second is your domain with the “www” prefix. When some people link to your site with the prefix and other people omit it both versions send traffic to the same site but the search engines see it as two different things!

This is called the canonical name issue and it affects most sites listed in the search engines. Using Google’s nifty define: operator I got this definition:

The real name of a host. Used in CNAME records, PTR records, NS records and MX records. A Canonical Name is something of a fiction because many servers have more then one equally valid name. Basically, any domain name that has an A record.

Most domains come with two A records that are equally valid. The first is the regular “domain.com” type the second is with the www-prefix like “www.domain.com”.
You can check to see if your site is affected by the canonical issue by typing it directly into your browser URL bar (example poetry.com). Then type it with the www prefix (example: www.poetry.com). Notice how the “www” part is there is you type it in explicitly or not of you don’t? That’s the problem.

Big companies and SEOs have been aware of this for a while and most big name sites have made the correction:

Without www	With www
Google	Google
Microsoft	Microsoft
14th Colony	14th Colony

Notice each of these redirect to the www version regardless of what you enter in the URL bar of your browser.

As confusing as this can be - even the engineers at Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are having a hard time fixing it - there is a simple solution.

By typing your domain name into the Seeing Double tool the code you need to upload to your site is automatically generated. This removes the possibility of errors on your end and makes fixing this problem take just a couple minutes.

This will put 100% of your link credit where it needs to be and help boost your site in the SERPs!

PS. Special thanks to Wit who got me thinking about copywriting in this thread about .htaccess

Posted in SEO, Web Design

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