August 26th, 2010 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
Four Huge Web Design Errors That Are Costing You Business Online is an article that I ran across this morning. And I believe it to be excellent in determining four of the most common pitfalls that web designers make in designing. Now, I wanted to extend the list to 8 common website mistakes: So the first four covered by the article are: Read the rest of this entry »
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August 26th, 2010 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
One thing every online marketing specialist has to understand is that no matter what he does he is always dealing with individual persons. Once you get involved with analytics, the first mistake some marketers make is to start thinking that since you can track behavior as a group of users, all users are the same. It is very critical to understand that in the marketing business you assume that a market has similar needs and desires, and that they want to fill them with great intensity. The more they wait to fill their desires the more stress they receive, until they release the tension by fulfilling the desires, however everybody has slightly different desires and needs.
We all have real needs such as: a car, a house, a cell phone, a lottery ticket, friends, love, hosting, bananas and others, or it can be an abstract desire: I want to know the secret because it is secret. For example: a tv show says: “in a few seconds we are going to show you the biggest secret of all times!” and instantly they create in the viewers the abstract desire of completion. You want to know what it is. What for? It doesn’t matter. In fact before you started watching the show, you probably didn’t even have an interest. The same is applicable with sports. You may not be interested in a particular sport, however if you start to watch it, soon you’ll side with one of the teams.
The abstract desires can be created at any given moment by websites in many different ways. You can create this desires by creating un-conclusive statements to marketing phrases, for example: ” This product comes loaded with all your favorite features! What features are they talking about? Your favorite! How do they know my favorite features? By un-conclusive statements you transform the perception of the customer, because no matter what your copy says the brain has to process it and agree or disagree.
For example, right now you can agree or disagree with this article, but by reading it you are changing your perspective because you ask yourself if you agree or not. The moment you say: I don’t really care, that would mean that you are responding to the article.
You can direct the attention of your online users by the way you transform their emotions. For example if I say:
* Think for a second about the smell of the ocean, the warm sand and the breeze, feel the sun burning your skin little by little, think about the feeling later when your skin is all red and it hurts to touch anything.
If you read the last paragraph you don’t only read it and keep going but you actually set yourself in the picture because most of us has experienced that and it is painful.
You can use online copy to create sensations that will move the understanding of your audience in many ways. Some will make them buy, some will not.
If you go into a sweater store in the middle of the summer and it is 115 F. out and the store has this huge carpet with long hair and you happen to realize that the A/C is broken inside you probably won’t buy. That is why retailers make sure to set their A/C to 72 degrees.
Same situation, the hottest day ever, you look up an you see a beach bar selling bear for half price, the bear is 33F. just when it is starting to ice, you can feel the little pieces of ice – yes, it is very probably that you would buy.
Statement number one in Marketing: Life is about value. You, as everyone else, is fighting to be, to become. Things give us pleasure because they allow us to get closer to becoming or being. We buy food, cars, houses, pens, cds, magic cards, plastic bags, ice, cheese, stationary bikes. Just to become. The value of everything is determined by the ability to give that power > a bottle of water from a friend won’t be of value most of the time, however think of the value that it creates if you haven’t had any for a week in a remote desert…
The same bottle of water, however the perceived value is much higher the second time. The perceived value is based on 1. The location, 2. The especial conditions or circumstances 3. The belief system and others.
Imagine what happens when somebody writes a book. The book itself is written once. In other words the main effort is done once. The printing and distributing is a variable costs so technically you don’t really create true value every time that somebody buys the book. What you do create is perceived value because a new reader can use your information to his benefit.
Summarizing: Create perceived value for your products or services today, if you don’t, you’ll always regret it.
If you want to market sucessfully products online, find that one characteristic that makes people become, and share it.
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August 22nd, 2010 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
Ok here we go:
Day 1. In the morning: Have a cup of coffee and a bagel with creme cheese. Ok, ready with that? Perfect. Now go ahead and sit back for 1 hour and take in this introductory video. It starts by telling you the very basics of jQuery: Read the rest of this entry »
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August 22nd, 2010 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
I have seen how some businesses are more interested in the look of the website, instead of the little great things behind scenes. I guess it’s easy for me to see the complexities of interactive marketing because I work doing this all day long. However, I also understand that it doesn’t necessarily come naturally to everybody. Read the rest of this entry »
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August 5th, 2010 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
It has been a while since I wrote my last post and so with the latest news I thought I would take a second to write a bit.
The new website of the city of Raleigh is, in my humble opinion, a waste of tax payer dollars. As a professional website developer and strategist and having developed hundreds of websites myself, I can tell you that this website is overpriced and under-designed. Read the rest of this entry »
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July 18th, 2010 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
First of all I want to say that every one of us responds pretty much the same way to stimuli. We all try to avoid pain and welcome pleasure. It seems to be inserted into our nervous systems. Read the rest of this entry »
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June 25th, 2010 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
I just got my new iPhone and I honestly love the way it looks, the design and the software. Man that thing is beautiful. However I am always aware that with design you have the possibility of mistakes by not considering certain problems. You can’t plan for every scenario out there. Read the rest of this entry »
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June 15th, 2010 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
Today Apple, INC. was to release their pre-orders for the new generation of iPhone, the iPhone 4. However the store was down and it seemed the problem was the validation communication with AT&T. In any event, what I wanted to write about was the human behavior behind the whole new iPhone. Read the rest of this entry »
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June 9th, 2010 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
If you are using Drupal’s Insert Module, you may come across a very interesting problem. You may insert new images into your posts (inline), however, when you are ready to edit nodes you are welcomed with a message that says: “Referencing to the file used in the field is not allowed.” What do you do then? Read the rest of this entry »
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