Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Branding that Sells
Selling at a given perspective can be viewed as tedious and meticulous. If you include the overall process, that will make the subject a little complex.
Selling, according to a poem, is everyone's business. Selling is knowing who's your competition, market and what is important. It is knowing your service, idea, product and your market needs. It is knowing what are accepted and what are not. Selling is knowing how to treat and be treated. In a nutshell, selling is knowing - knowing the line of work of selling.
Successful brokers and agents are saying that when they have assimilated data successfully, chances are they are going to bag a purchase. Salesmen are saying that if they have already determined the needs, objectives and goals of the potential client, there is no need to sell, they will just come. Businessmen, on the other hand, are saying that if there is already a mutual feeling of trust and confidence it will be easier to sell.
One of the striking strategies in selling is by branding. Coke, Revlon, Adidas and the rest of the widely-popular brands became bearably popular by reason of branding. Branding, so to speak, is image building. It imbibes a certain stigma in connection to the thing it is associated with. Though the widely used kind of branding is done with products, branding can also be done to services like in legal services that a lawyer is offering. Also, it is applicable to persons especially celebrities and politicians. Branding is oftentimes widespread during the building up stage of a star and for politicians, in times of election.
Almost all large companies are using branding in order to solicit familiarity and brand retention. This is the reason why companies at the middle stratum are thinking that it involves large amount of money in order to make branding possible. This is not always the case. Branding can be made by using promotional materials like printed T-shirt, key, tags, mugs, pens, bags, CD holders, badge holders, calendars, clocks, caps, balloons and other promotional specialties. This is what we call image branding along with direct sales approach.
A brilliant selling investment need not be expensive. It just needs a dash of imagination, creativity and a slice of resources. The goal is to make the consumers think about the product to make him forget the rest of the products being marketed. Try this type of strategy and be the living witness of its impressive results!
Selling, according to a poem, is everyone's business. Selling is knowing who's your competition, market and what is important. It is knowing your service, idea, product and your market needs. It is knowing what are accepted and what are not. Selling is knowing how to treat and be treated. In a nutshell, selling is knowing - knowing the line of work of selling.
Successful brokers and agents are saying that when they have assimilated data successfully, chances are they are going to bag a purchase. Salesmen are saying that if they have already determined the needs, objectives and goals of the potential client, there is no need to sell, they will just come. Businessmen, on the other hand, are saying that if there is already a mutual feeling of trust and confidence it will be easier to sell.
One of the striking strategies in selling is by branding. Coke, Revlon, Adidas and the rest of the widely-popular brands became bearably popular by reason of branding. Branding, so to speak, is image building. It imbibes a certain stigma in connection to the thing it is associated with. Though the widely used kind of branding is done with products, branding can also be done to services like in legal services that a lawyer is offering. Also, it is applicable to persons especially celebrities and politicians. Branding is oftentimes widespread during the building up stage of a star and for politicians, in times of election.
Almost all large companies are using branding in order to solicit familiarity and brand retention. This is the reason why companies at the middle stratum are thinking that it involves large amount of money in order to make branding possible. This is not always the case. Branding can be made by using promotional materials like printed T-shirt, key, tags, mugs, pens, bags, CD holders, badge holders, calendars, clocks, caps, balloons and other promotional specialties. This is what we call image branding along with direct sales approach.
A brilliant selling investment need not be expensive. It just needs a dash of imagination, creativity and a slice of resources. The goal is to make the consumers think about the product to make him forget the rest of the products being marketed. Try this type of strategy and be the living witness of its impressive results!
Let Triga Studios Help You. We do Branding solutions through Graphic Design. Contact Us.
http://trigasolutions.com/studios/
http://trigaxstudios.multiply.com
trigaXstudios@gmail.com
http://trigasolutions.com/studios/
http://trigaxstudios.multiply.com
trigaXstudios@gmail.com
Friday, July 17, 2009
Magnetic Branding - How to Attract vs. Acquire Customers
What makes a company brand magnetic -- one that seems to effortlessly attract customers, revenue, media attention and employees alike? It only requires a look at nature itself to discover the answers. Invisible forces such as magnetism and gravity have a constant influence on our lives. They govern us without our awareness of their presence. Their enegies are not overt and go largely unnoticed, yet they govern so much of what we do.
Just as in science, magnetic companies and brands are ones that are aligned and "pulling" in the same direction. Magnetism works when electrons are charged and line up in the same direction. In much the same way, when businesses are charged behind a unified and coherent message, employees and customers alike will begin to align themselves to that vision. The target customer is no longer a "target", since they begin to find you. The emphasis slowly shifts from atrificially capturing customers to naturally attracting them.
Magnetism then comes from a distilled and powerful sense of purpose. This purpose revirberates throughout the organization and intuitvely instructs the organization's members to act and behave in ways that promote this vision. The cost of top down driven, internal messaging is greatly reduced. The process becomes more natural, more fluid and instinctive.
So is this purpose the same as a mission statement or brand strategy?
Yes and no. Most mission statements are written in boardrooms and sit in nice plaques on the walls. Purpose is something that comes from the heart, and it needs to come from the heart of top management. Again, this is about alignment, and if top management is all about maximizing the bottom line, it cannot create a magnetic company whose mission statement expounds the virtues of altruistic, self sacrificing service. It just won't vibrate, resonate and ultimately attract the desired customer. So you can also say magnetic companies are genuine in nature. Their values are consistant at all levels of the organization. Profit then becomes a natural byproduct of doing what the company believes in, whether it's delivering on price, quality or service.
How does a company find its purpose? It's already there, waiting to be acknowledged and promoted. For example, many owners I've dealt with felt passionate about their quality, but also felt compelled and pressured to compete based on price. They are brainwashed by their sales force or other outside influences to believe they can only compete by selling for less. When these company presidents/owners begin to realize there is an audience that doesn't buy on price alone, they become emboldend and that energy translates throughout the company- enegizing everyone. Soon "the talk" is about product quality and innovatioins, new customers appear and old (time consuming, complaining, incongruent) ones begin to leave. The company, the brand, the image, begin to align and "pull" in a quiet but powerful way.
An Optometrist came to me years ago, desparte to create an image of speedy service, to combat the one hour vision centers that were devouring the market. When I asked him how long it took him to provide the service, his reply was "one week, but I think I can get it down to three days". Someone looking for glasses in one hour is not going to be thrilled with waiting three days. So I designed a campaign with a headline that read "We take time." It went on to extoll the vital role of vison in our lives and why it's important to wait to make sure an eyeglass prescription is done right by a professional. The doctor felt I had completely missed his point, but he trusted my judgement and ran the campaign. The phone began to ring and one lady said "I haven't had my prescription filled because I was waiting to find someone who took more than one hour to 'grind' my glasses". He has run the ad for over 15 years and "taking the time" has now become his position in the market. His revenue, share and bottom line all increased when he became comfortable and congruent with who he was and what he did best- regardless of the market.
Transforming a company or brand from mediocre to magnetic requires refocusing on the passion that created it and aligning all else around it. Rather than chasing the market, the market will find you. And that makes work, and life in general, much more attractive.
About the Author
Phil's life goal of "creating environments where people thrive" reflects his desire to assist in both personal and corporate growth. With 18 years experience as the president and owner of a full service advertising and branding firm, Phil posseses a marketing "sixth sense" that has helped launch several national and internet companies. Phil resides with wife Michelle and four energetic offspring outside Asheville, North Carolina.
Just as in science, magnetic companies and brands are ones that are aligned and "pulling" in the same direction. Magnetism works when electrons are charged and line up in the same direction. In much the same way, when businesses are charged behind a unified and coherent message, employees and customers alike will begin to align themselves to that vision. The target customer is no longer a "target", since they begin to find you. The emphasis slowly shifts from atrificially capturing customers to naturally attracting them.
Magnetism then comes from a distilled and powerful sense of purpose. This purpose revirberates throughout the organization and intuitvely instructs the organization's members to act and behave in ways that promote this vision. The cost of top down driven, internal messaging is greatly reduced. The process becomes more natural, more fluid and instinctive.
So is this purpose the same as a mission statement or brand strategy?
Yes and no. Most mission statements are written in boardrooms and sit in nice plaques on the walls. Purpose is something that comes from the heart, and it needs to come from the heart of top management. Again, this is about alignment, and if top management is all about maximizing the bottom line, it cannot create a magnetic company whose mission statement expounds the virtues of altruistic, self sacrificing service. It just won't vibrate, resonate and ultimately attract the desired customer. So you can also say magnetic companies are genuine in nature. Their values are consistant at all levels of the organization. Profit then becomes a natural byproduct of doing what the company believes in, whether it's delivering on price, quality or service.
How does a company find its purpose? It's already there, waiting to be acknowledged and promoted. For example, many owners I've dealt with felt passionate about their quality, but also felt compelled and pressured to compete based on price. They are brainwashed by their sales force or other outside influences to believe they can only compete by selling for less. When these company presidents/owners begin to realize there is an audience that doesn't buy on price alone, they become emboldend and that energy translates throughout the company- enegizing everyone. Soon "the talk" is about product quality and innovatioins, new customers appear and old (time consuming, complaining, incongruent) ones begin to leave. The company, the brand, the image, begin to align and "pull" in a quiet but powerful way.
An Optometrist came to me years ago, desparte to create an image of speedy service, to combat the one hour vision centers that were devouring the market. When I asked him how long it took him to provide the service, his reply was "one week, but I think I can get it down to three days". Someone looking for glasses in one hour is not going to be thrilled with waiting three days. So I designed a campaign with a headline that read "We take time." It went on to extoll the vital role of vison in our lives and why it's important to wait to make sure an eyeglass prescription is done right by a professional. The doctor felt I had completely missed his point, but he trusted my judgement and ran the campaign. The phone began to ring and one lady said "I haven't had my prescription filled because I was waiting to find someone who took more than one hour to 'grind' my glasses". He has run the ad for over 15 years and "taking the time" has now become his position in the market. His revenue, share and bottom line all increased when he became comfortable and congruent with who he was and what he did best- regardless of the market.
Transforming a company or brand from mediocre to magnetic requires refocusing on the passion that created it and aligning all else around it. Rather than chasing the market, the market will find you. And that makes work, and life in general, much more attractive.
About the Author
Phil's life goal of "creating environments where people thrive" reflects his desire to assist in both personal and corporate growth. With 18 years experience as the president and owner of a full service advertising and branding firm, Phil posseses a marketing "sixth sense" that has helped launch several national and internet companies. Phil resides with wife Michelle and four energetic offspring outside Asheville, North Carolina.
Let Triga Studios Help You. We do Branding solutions through Graphic Design. Contact Us.
http://trigasolutions.com/studios/
http://trigaxstudios.multiply.com
trigaXstudios@gmail.com
http://trigasolutions.com/studios/
http://trigaxstudios.multiply.com
trigaXstudios@gmail.com
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Why Branding Is Vital For Your Home Business Success
On a hot Sunday afternoon when your body fluids have been drained dry by the scorching sun, which would you rather order? Coca Cola, or Jeebejus Sweet Soda? The answer is as clear as it is universal. The more established brand would be chosen almost every time.
This is why branding is very important in building a home business. Cyberspace is fueled by information, and information travels fast. Everything on the Internet is delivered with digital speed. Competitions would sprout from out of nowhere on a daily basis. The only way to contend is by beating them to the punch when it comes to consumer recall, and this can be done through effective branding.
In building a home Internet business, much care and attention must be given to your enterprise's name. It is the means by which people would refer to it, after all. Once a name has been decided on, the next logical step would be to build on that brand and expose it to as many people as possible.
Building a brand, and consequently, building an online presence, can be as fast or as meticulously slow as you want it to be. As we've mentioned earlier, everything on cyberspace is faster, and this includes branding your home business. But you also proceed at your own pace, and in the process, giving your market the impression that you're emphasizing quality over popularity.
Here are some branding techniques you could use to help you in building a home Internet business:
* Always use your name. A lot of people are hesitant about online transactions. Giving them your real name would be taken as an invitation for their trust. Additionally, your name would give them something to remember you by.
* Article marketing can help in branding you as an expert on the subject you wrote about. And you being a representation of your enterprise, will in turn help in branding and building a home Internet business.
* Consider crafting a logo during the planning stages in building your business. Visual representations are sometimes easier to remember than written words.
* Build relationships. Relationships would help you achieve a level of credibility and reliability. Additionally, those whom you have befriended would be more than willing to give a good word about you, either in private correspondences with their own network, or publicly by giving you a testimonial for your products or services.
* Provide bonuses and excellent after-sales services. These value added attractions would make your clients feel special, and they would remember you well because of it. Consider this detail in building an online business.
* Publish your own eZine. Having a constant medium through which your thought and your business messages can be conveyed would be a fantastic vehicle in building your brand.
These are but some of the more popular ways of branding, as utilized by veteran Internet marketers. It would serve you well if you'd follow their footsteps and give a good start in building an Internet business that would be remembered for a long, long time.
This is why branding is very important in building a home business. Cyberspace is fueled by information, and information travels fast. Everything on the Internet is delivered with digital speed. Competitions would sprout from out of nowhere on a daily basis. The only way to contend is by beating them to the punch when it comes to consumer recall, and this can be done through effective branding.
In building a home Internet business, much care and attention must be given to your enterprise's name. It is the means by which people would refer to it, after all. Once a name has been decided on, the next logical step would be to build on that brand and expose it to as many people as possible.
Building a brand, and consequently, building an online presence, can be as fast or as meticulously slow as you want it to be. As we've mentioned earlier, everything on cyberspace is faster, and this includes branding your home business. But you also proceed at your own pace, and in the process, giving your market the impression that you're emphasizing quality over popularity.
Here are some branding techniques you could use to help you in building a home Internet business:
* Always use your name. A lot of people are hesitant about online transactions. Giving them your real name would be taken as an invitation for their trust. Additionally, your name would give them something to remember you by.
* Article marketing can help in branding you as an expert on the subject you wrote about. And you being a representation of your enterprise, will in turn help in branding and building a home Internet business.
* Consider crafting a logo during the planning stages in building your business. Visual representations are sometimes easier to remember than written words.
* Build relationships. Relationships would help you achieve a level of credibility and reliability. Additionally, those whom you have befriended would be more than willing to give a good word about you, either in private correspondences with their own network, or publicly by giving you a testimonial for your products or services.
* Provide bonuses and excellent after-sales services. These value added attractions would make your clients feel special, and they would remember you well because of it. Consider this detail in building an online business.
* Publish your own eZine. Having a constant medium through which your thought and your business messages can be conveyed would be a fantastic vehicle in building your brand.
These are but some of the more popular ways of branding, as utilized by veteran Internet marketers. It would serve you well if you'd follow their footsteps and give a good start in building an Internet business that would be remembered for a long, long time.
Let Triga Studios Help You. We do Branding solutions through Graphic Design. Contact Us.
http://trigasolutions.com/studios/
http://trigaxstudios.multiply.com
trigaXstudios@gmail.com
90s Web Design: A Nostalgic Look Back
A nostalgic look back at 90s web design, and a warning to anyone whose website is an accidental anachronism.
Remember the days when every PC was beige, every website had a little Netscape icon on the homepage, Geocities and Tripod hosted just about every single personal homepage, and "Google" was just a funny-sounding word?
The mid-late 1990s were the playful childhood of the worldwide web, a time of great expectations for the future and pretty low standards for the present. Those were the days when doing a web search meant poring through several pages of listings rather than glancing at the first three results--but at least relatively few of those websites were unabashedly profit-driven.
Hallmarks of 1990s Web Design
Of course, when someone says that a website looks like it came from 1996, it's no compliment. You start to imagine loud background images, and little "email me" mailboxes with letters going in and out in an endless loop. Amateurish, silly, unprofessional, conceited, and unusable are all adjectives that pretty well describe how most websites were made just ten years ago.
Why were websites so bad back then?
Knowledge. Few people knew how to build a good website back then, before authorities like Jakob Nielsen starting evangelizing their studies of web user behavior.
Difficulty. In those days, there weren't abundant software and templates that could produce a visually pleasing, easy-to-use website in 10 minutes. Instead, you either hand-coded your site in Notepad or used FrontPage.
Giddiness. When a new toy came out, whether it was JavaScript, Java, Frames, animated Gifs, or Flash, it was simply crammed into an already overstuffed toy box of a website, regardless of whether it served any purpose.
Browsing through the Internet Archive's WayBack Machine, it's hard not to feel a twinge of nostalgia for a simpler time when we were all beginners at this. Still, one of the best reasons for looking at 90s website design is to avoid repeating history's web design mistakes. This would be a useful exercise for the tragic number of today's personal homepages and even small business websites that are accidentally retro.
Splash Pages
Sometime around 1998, websites all over the internet discovered Flash, the software that allowed for easy animation of images on a website. Suddenly you could no longer visit half the pages on the web without sitting through at least thirty seconds of a logo revolving, glinting, sliding, or bouncing across the screen.
Flash "splash pages," as these opening animations were called, became the internet's version of vacation pictures. Everyone loved to display Flash on their site, and everyone hated to have to sit through someone else's Flash presentation.
Of all the thousands of splash pages made in the 1990s and the few still made today, hardly any ever communicated any useful information or provided any entertainment. They were monuments to the egos of the websites' owners. Still, today, when so many business website owners are working so hard to wring every last bit of effectiveness out of their sites, it's almost charming to think of a business owner actually putting ego well ahead of the profit to have been derived from all the visitors who hit the "back" button rather than sit through an animated logo.
Text Troubles
"Welcome to…" Every single website homepage in 1996 had to have the word "welcome" somewhere, often in the largest headline. After all, isn't saying "welcome" more vital than saying what the web page is all about in the first place?
Background images. Remember all those people who had their kids' pictures tiled in the background of every page? Remember how much fun it was trying to guess what the words were in the sections where the font color and the color of the image were the same?
Dark background, light text. My favorite was orange font on purple background, though the ubiquitous yellow white text on blue, green or red was nice, too. Of course, anyone who will make their text harder to read with a silly gimmick is just paying you the courtesy of letting you know they couldn't possibly have written anything worth reading.
Entire paragraphs of text centered. After all, haven't millennia of flush-left margins just made our eyes lazy?
"This Site Is Best Viewed in Netscape 4.666, 1,000x3300 resolution." It was always so cute when site owners actually imagined anyone but their mothers would care enough to change their browser set up to look at some random person's website.
All-image no-text publishing. Some of the worst websites would actually do the world the service of putting all their text in image format so that no search engine would ever find them. What sacrifice!
Hyperactive Pages
TV-envy was a common psychological malady in 1990s web design. Since streaming video and even Flash were still in their infancy, web designers settled for simply making the elements on their pages move like Mexican jumping beans.
Animated Gifs
In 1996, just before the dawn of Flash, animated gifs were in full swing, dancing, sliding, and scrolling their way across the retinas of web surfers trying to read the text on the page.
Scrolling Text
Just in case you were having a too easy time tuning out all the dancing graphics on the page, an ambitious mid-1990s web designer had a simple but powerful trick for giving you a headache: scrolling text. Through the magic of JavaScript, website owners could achieve the perfect combination of too fast to read comfortably and too slow to read quickly.
For a while, a business owner could even separate the serious from the wannabe prospects based just on how (un)professional their business websites looked. Sadly, the development of template-based website authoring software means that even someone with no taste or sense whatsoever can make websites that look as good as the most biggest-budget design of five years ago.
Of course, there are still some websites whose owners seem to be trying to spark a resurgence in animated gifs, background images, and ugly text. 'll just have to trust that everyone is laughing with them, not at them.
Remember the days when every PC was beige, every website had a little Netscape icon on the homepage, Geocities and Tripod hosted just about every single personal homepage, and "Google" was just a funny-sounding word?
The mid-late 1990s were the playful childhood of the worldwide web, a time of great expectations for the future and pretty low standards for the present. Those were the days when doing a web search meant poring through several pages of listings rather than glancing at the first three results--but at least relatively few of those websites were unabashedly profit-driven.
Hallmarks of 1990s Web Design
Of course, when someone says that a website looks like it came from 1996, it's no compliment. You start to imagine loud background images, and little "email me" mailboxes with letters going in and out in an endless loop. Amateurish, silly, unprofessional, conceited, and unusable are all adjectives that pretty well describe how most websites were made just ten years ago.
Why were websites so bad back then?
Knowledge. Few people knew how to build a good website back then, before authorities like Jakob Nielsen starting evangelizing their studies of web user behavior.
Difficulty. In those days, there weren't abundant software and templates that could produce a visually pleasing, easy-to-use website in 10 minutes. Instead, you either hand-coded your site in Notepad or used FrontPage.
Giddiness. When a new toy came out, whether it was JavaScript, Java, Frames, animated Gifs, or Flash, it was simply crammed into an already overstuffed toy box of a website, regardless of whether it served any purpose.
Browsing through the Internet Archive's WayBack Machine, it's hard not to feel a twinge of nostalgia for a simpler time when we were all beginners at this. Still, one of the best reasons for looking at 90s website design is to avoid repeating history's web design mistakes. This would be a useful exercise for the tragic number of today's personal homepages and even small business websites that are accidentally retro.
Splash Pages
Sometime around 1998, websites all over the internet discovered Flash, the software that allowed for easy animation of images on a website. Suddenly you could no longer visit half the pages on the web without sitting through at least thirty seconds of a logo revolving, glinting, sliding, or bouncing across the screen.
Flash "splash pages," as these opening animations were called, became the internet's version of vacation pictures. Everyone loved to display Flash on their site, and everyone hated to have to sit through someone else's Flash presentation.
Of all the thousands of splash pages made in the 1990s and the few still made today, hardly any ever communicated any useful information or provided any entertainment. They were monuments to the egos of the websites' owners. Still, today, when so many business website owners are working so hard to wring every last bit of effectiveness out of their sites, it's almost charming to think of a business owner actually putting ego well ahead of the profit to have been derived from all the visitors who hit the "back" button rather than sit through an animated logo.
Text Troubles
"Welcome to…" Every single website homepage in 1996 had to have the word "welcome" somewhere, often in the largest headline. After all, isn't saying "welcome" more vital than saying what the web page is all about in the first place?
Background images. Remember all those people who had their kids' pictures tiled in the background of every page? Remember how much fun it was trying to guess what the words were in the sections where the font color and the color of the image were the same?
Dark background, light text. My favorite was orange font on purple background, though the ubiquitous yellow white text on blue, green or red was nice, too. Of course, anyone who will make their text harder to read with a silly gimmick is just paying you the courtesy of letting you know they couldn't possibly have written anything worth reading.
Entire paragraphs of text centered. After all, haven't millennia of flush-left margins just made our eyes lazy?
"This Site Is Best Viewed in Netscape 4.666, 1,000x3300 resolution." It was always so cute when site owners actually imagined anyone but their mothers would care enough to change their browser set up to look at some random person's website.
All-image no-text publishing. Some of the worst websites would actually do the world the service of putting all their text in image format so that no search engine would ever find them. What sacrifice!
Hyperactive Pages
TV-envy was a common psychological malady in 1990s web design. Since streaming video and even Flash were still in their infancy, web designers settled for simply making the elements on their pages move like Mexican jumping beans.
Animated Gifs
In 1996, just before the dawn of Flash, animated gifs were in full swing, dancing, sliding, and scrolling their way across the retinas of web surfers trying to read the text on the page.
Scrolling Text
Just in case you were having a too easy time tuning out all the dancing graphics on the page, an ambitious mid-1990s web designer had a simple but powerful trick for giving you a headache: scrolling text. Through the magic of JavaScript, website owners could achieve the perfect combination of too fast to read comfortably and too slow to read quickly.
For a while, a business owner could even separate the serious from the wannabe prospects based just on how (un)professional their business websites looked. Sadly, the development of template-based website authoring software means that even someone with no taste or sense whatsoever can make websites that look as good as the most biggest-budget design of five years ago.
Of course, there are still some websites whose owners seem to be trying to spark a resurgence in animated gifs, background images, and ugly text. 'll just have to trust that everyone is laughing with them, not at them.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Big Business Web Design Disasters
When you think of the world's most successful businesses, what names come to mind? Most likely, consumer-oriented giants such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Sheraton, Disney, IBM, and General Electric. Not only have they spent billions on advertising to buy their way into your head. They offer convenient products and services that have made them a part of your life.
But when you think of the most successful web sites, what names come to mind? Names like Google, Yahoo! Amazon, AOL, Kazaa (for better or worse), and Hotmail.
The late-1990s mantra about the web being a disruptive technology that would destroy traditional companies may have been overstated. But a decade and a half into the web's existence, it is clear that the world's leading corporations have been sidelined on the web.
The biggest shopping site is not walmart.com but amazon.com. The biggest map site is not randmcnally.com but mapquest.com.
Established companies have usually only been able to buy their way into this market through acquisitions (as with Microsoft's purchase of Hotmail, which it used as a base for creating MSN).
Why, with few exceptions, were the world's most successful web sites not launched by the world's most successful corporations?
Many Big Name Companies' Web Sites a Vast Waste of Time for Visitors
The McDonald's web site talks about food, but has no real menu. The Coca-Cola USA web site has no clear ingredients list or nutritional information, no recipes for floats or mixed drinks, no company history, and nothing else useful to people who like Coke. All that information has been inexplicably located on the "company" page, which on every other web site is used for investor relations. The Johnson and Johnson web site has useful information if you can access it—when the author attempted to open it, it crashed two different web browsers (Internet Explorer and Mozilla) before finally yielding (to the Opera browser).
Many big-name companies' web sites offer lessons in what not to do in web design. The biggest lesson by far is not to sacrifice usability in an attempt to look cool, and never forget why your users came to your site in the first place. McDonald's may be the world's largest restaurant chain, but it didn't get that way because of its web site.
Why Big-Budget Websites Are More Often Bombs than Blockbusters
The web sites of many successful corporations (both B2C and B2B) are like big-budget Hollywood movies that spend millions on stars and special effects, and a quarter of a percent of the budget on the script. Worse, the special effects of blockbuster web sites are far more annoying than impressive.
Special Effect that Bombs Number 1: Flash!
When web sites don't offer any content—any useful information to read—what do they put up there instead? Spinning Coke bottles. Chicken McNuggets and French fries that zoom out toward you when you position your cursor over them. Changing pictures of generic-looking office buildings and men in suits (on the web site of real estate giant CB Richard Ellis—but that essentially describes the generic look of many corporate web sites).
Of course, Flash can be used as a way to present content—words, both printed and recorded, and pictures that actually illustrate something. But more often, it is used to impress. And most often, it ends up annoying. Who wants to spend the better part of a minute waiting for a rotation of generic pictures of smiling models?
Special Effect that Bombs Number 2: Splash Screens
You type in duracell.com expecting information on batteries—which you will find, if you have the patience not to hit the “back” button while the site shows a picture of a battery revolving painfully slowly.
On http://www.mcdonalds.com you're met with pictures of happy children playing with Ronald McDonald and a menu to select what country you're from.
Johnson's and Johnson's web site shows a logo before automatically redirecting you to the main page—that is if it doesn't crash your browser first (which happened when the author tried to access the page on May 2, 2004 ).
Another way big consumer corporations' web sites from Schick to Mercedes-Benz to Thomas Cooke waste your time with splash pages is by making you choose what country you're visiting from. This could have been detected automatically, or at least, useful worldwide content could have been placed on the homepage, with an option to choose a country prominently displayed.
Splash pages are the internet equivalent of making patrons wait in line out front before letting them inside. Unless a site belongs to a night club or a professional services firm with too much business, keeping people outside can't be a good idea.
Special Effect that Bombs Number 3: Overbuilt or Badly Built “Dynamic” Functionality
Every web surfer has a story about a shopping cart that malfunctioned just when they were about to click “purchase” on something they really wanted. Or a detailed form that lost all the information after the “submit” button was pressed.
Sometimes, malfunctioning dynamic content can distort the way an entire site presents itself. If the dynamic content is so complex that it presents problems for many users, it is unlikely the dynamic content is worth it. When I visited disney.com in May 2004, my first greeting was a message that your computer is sufficiently up-to-date (or not) to handle the site.
In short, you may want your small or medium-sized business to get as big as Coca Cola or Disney, but you'll never get there if your website looks like theirs do.
But when you think of the most successful web sites, what names come to mind? Names like Google, Yahoo! Amazon, AOL, Kazaa (for better or worse), and Hotmail.
The late-1990s mantra about the web being a disruptive technology that would destroy traditional companies may have been overstated. But a decade and a half into the web's existence, it is clear that the world's leading corporations have been sidelined on the web.
The biggest shopping site is not walmart.com but amazon.com. The biggest map site is not randmcnally.com but mapquest.com.
Established companies have usually only been able to buy their way into this market through acquisitions (as with Microsoft's purchase of Hotmail, which it used as a base for creating MSN).
Why, with few exceptions, were the world's most successful web sites not launched by the world's most successful corporations?
Many Big Name Companies' Web Sites a Vast Waste of Time for Visitors
The McDonald's web site talks about food, but has no real menu. The Coca-Cola USA web site has no clear ingredients list or nutritional information, no recipes for floats or mixed drinks, no company history, and nothing else useful to people who like Coke. All that information has been inexplicably located on the "company" page, which on every other web site is used for investor relations. The Johnson and Johnson web site has useful information if you can access it—when the author attempted to open it, it crashed two different web browsers (Internet Explorer and Mozilla) before finally yielding (to the Opera browser).
Many big-name companies' web sites offer lessons in what not to do in web design. The biggest lesson by far is not to sacrifice usability in an attempt to look cool, and never forget why your users came to your site in the first place. McDonald's may be the world's largest restaurant chain, but it didn't get that way because of its web site.
Why Big-Budget Websites Are More Often Bombs than Blockbusters
The web sites of many successful corporations (both B2C and B2B) are like big-budget Hollywood movies that spend millions on stars and special effects, and a quarter of a percent of the budget on the script. Worse, the special effects of blockbuster web sites are far more annoying than impressive.
Special Effect that Bombs Number 1: Flash!
When web sites don't offer any content—any useful information to read—what do they put up there instead? Spinning Coke bottles. Chicken McNuggets and French fries that zoom out toward you when you position your cursor over them. Changing pictures of generic-looking office buildings and men in suits (on the web site of real estate giant CB Richard Ellis—but that essentially describes the generic look of many corporate web sites).
Of course, Flash can be used as a way to present content—words, both printed and recorded, and pictures that actually illustrate something. But more often, it is used to impress. And most often, it ends up annoying. Who wants to spend the better part of a minute waiting for a rotation of generic pictures of smiling models?
Special Effect that Bombs Number 2: Splash Screens
You type in duracell.com expecting information on batteries—which you will find, if you have the patience not to hit the “back” button while the site shows a picture of a battery revolving painfully slowly.
On http://www.mcdonalds.com you're met with pictures of happy children playing with Ronald McDonald and a menu to select what country you're from.
Johnson's and Johnson's web site shows a logo before automatically redirecting you to the main page—that is if it doesn't crash your browser first (which happened when the author tried to access the page on May 2, 2004 ).
Another way big consumer corporations' web sites from Schick to Mercedes-Benz to Thomas Cooke waste your time with splash pages is by making you choose what country you're visiting from. This could have been detected automatically, or at least, useful worldwide content could have been placed on the homepage, with an option to choose a country prominently displayed.
Splash pages are the internet equivalent of making patrons wait in line out front before letting them inside. Unless a site belongs to a night club or a professional services firm with too much business, keeping people outside can't be a good idea.
Special Effect that Bombs Number 3: Overbuilt or Badly Built “Dynamic” Functionality
Every web surfer has a story about a shopping cart that malfunctioned just when they were about to click “purchase” on something they really wanted. Or a detailed form that lost all the information after the “submit” button was pressed.
Sometimes, malfunctioning dynamic content can distort the way an entire site presents itself. If the dynamic content is so complex that it presents problems for many users, it is unlikely the dynamic content is worth it. When I visited disney.com in May 2004, my first greeting was a message that your computer is sufficiently up-to-date (or not) to handle the site.
In short, you may want your small or medium-sized business to get as big as Coca Cola or Disney, but you'll never get there if your website looks like theirs do.
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