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What makes a good website
- 1. eMarketing: What Makes a good website? an eMarketing Workshop designed for the Cultural World
- 3. A Global Village What is the Internet? The world wide interconnection of individual networks operated by governments, industry, academia and private parties. Date Number of Users % of World Population December 1995 16 million 0.4% March 2000 304 million 5.0% December 2005 888 million 13.9% December 2008 1,574 million 23.5% December 2009 1,802 million 26.6% September 2010 1,971 million 28.8%
- 6. Interactive Collaborative Frequently updated User controlled Passive Static Rarely Updated Webmaster controlled Latest developments
- 9. Vision What do you want your visitors to think of you? What is the lasting impression you want to leave with your visitors? What are the long-term aspirations of your website? Conveyed through good website development & design
- 10. Aims What is it you want your visitors to do on your website? What do you want to achieve through your website? Conveyed through good website design
- 11. Audiences Who are you wanting to attract to your website? Why should they visit your website? Where are they coming from? Conveyed through good website promotion & use of analytics
- 12. Exercise One Workbook: ‘Vision, Aims & Audiences’
- 13. What makes a good website? Brand Key elements Little touches Ease
- 14. Capture and communicate the value and benefit your providing visitors. Make an immediate connection when visitors enter your site. Be consistent with your overall brand and communications. Create a beautiful, professional and highly- functional experience. Your Brand needs to…
- 31. User Ease Organised and intuitive navigation structure. Multiple ways to access one piece of information. Making it easy for your visitors and for yourself. Manageability A Content Management System Ability to make changes and updates without the need of an IT expert. Is it Easy…
- 37. What do you want your website say about you?
- 41. Exercise two Workbook: ‘Your Website Now’
- 42. What online elements work really well for your web visitors? What would you change about your website now? Exercise two What first impression will your website make?
- 46. Content management systems What is a content management system? CMS is a tool that enables a variety of technical and non-technical staff to create, edit, manage and finally publish a variety of content, whilst being constrained by a centralised set of rules, processes and workflows that ensure coherent, validated electronic content.
- 57. It takes less then 10 Seconds to grab peoples attention Less if your website takes 4 seconds to download Next Step: Effective Website Design
- 58. AIDAs A ttention I nterest D esire A ction s atisfaction
- 59. A ttention Be Honest Relevant Tasteful Clear Make a statement Make an offering Ask a question Tell them something
- 63. I nterest Why should I stay?
- 69. D esire Appeal to personal needs and wants
- 75. A ction Book for an Event Sign up for a Newsletter Buy a product Recommend to a friend
- 80. Segment and Target Disseminate Information Sign up to Mailing List A Group visit What do your visitors want? International Tourists Local Residents Secondary Schools What’s On, Directions, Local Information Upcoming events, Local news, Offers Day Trips, Workshops, Tours, Educational Value
- 85. Exercise three Workbook: ‘Matching Audiences and Offerings’
- 86. Essential elements for top websites Good Visual Design Thoughtful Interface Primary Navigation Repeat Navigation Meaningful Content A solid ‘About’ page Contact Information Search Function Sign-up/ Subscribe button Sitemap Web optimised Images Statistics, Tracking and Analytics
- 89. Back in 15 Minutes
- 91. So What is Search Engine Optimisation? The process of increasing and improving the volume and quality of traffic to your website through natural or organic searches. A simple activity of ensuring your website can be found in Search Engines when people use words and phrases relevant to what your site is offering.
- 92. Search Engine Spiders… CONTENT META TAGS HEADINGS IMAGES LINKS SITEMAPS TITLE TAGS
- 97. 2. Deciding on the right words to use
- 99. 3. Grouping Your Keywords Theatre Scotland Performing Arts Perth and Kinross Holidays in Scotland Things to do in Scotland Scottish Tourism Scottish B&B’s Comedy Comedy Show Best comedy 2011 Comedy Shows What’s On Gallery Shop Where to eat Events
- 100. Exercise four Workbook: ‘What are my Keywords?’
- 101. SEO techniques all great websites should use
- 103. Title Tags
- 106. meta Tags - Description
- 108. meta Tags - keywords
- 109. Proper use of heading tags
- 110. Alt attributes on images
- 111. Title Attributes on links
- 112. XML Sitemap
- 114. relevant content
- 115. Link Building
- 116. Build your links
- 119. Email campaigns 90% of people sent or received an Email. 75% searched for information on goods and services. 51% read or downloaded online news, newspapers or magazines 45% listened to web radio or watched web television 43% posted messages to chat sites, social networking and blogs 40% played or downloaded games, images, film or music 38% uploaded self created content to a website to be shared 32% looked for information on learning, education and training 21% sold goods or services over the internet 12% donated to charities online. Office For National Statistics, Statistical Bulletin: Internet Access 2010
- 125. Customer Relationship Management CRM is a way of learning more about your audiences, or customers, needs and behaviours in order to develop stronger relationships with them.
- 128. Freshbooks
- 129. Google alerts
- 136. Website eNewsletters Monthly news One-off events/news Social Media Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Blog SEO Keywords, Page Tiles, Site Maps, Links Links Galleries, Museums, Local Shops, B&Bs Web Design Call to Action Photos Visitor Comments Analytics Monthly review – Google, Facebook, eNewsletter
- 137. Exercise five Worksheet: ‘eMarketing Strategy’
Hinweis der Redaktion
- Websites now act as the central contact point for audiences…
- Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian educator, philospher and scholar, who’s work has been viewed as one of the cornerstones of media theory, described the internet as ‘A Global Village’. Defined as the worldwide interconnection of individual networks operated by a number of key players such as governments, academia and industry, but importantly by private parties and individuals, such as you and me. Originally the internet served to interconnect laboratories engaged in government reseach, but it is only since 1994 that it has been expanded to serve millions of users and a multitude of purposes in all parts of the world. In a few short decades, the internet has consolidated itself as a very powerful platform that has changed the way we do business, and the way we communicate. The internet, as no other communication medium, has given an international or globalised dimension of the world. The internet has become the Universal source of information for millions of people, at home, at school and at work. It is perhaps the most democratic of all the mass media, and is an essential element of any successful marketing strategy!
- A survey conducted by ForeSee Results asked why people visited particular websites. They found that Brand; the familiarity with a site, company or brand was the biggest influencer (32%).
- What is Web 2.0? Web 2.0 came from the idea that people who consume media, access the internet and use the web shouldn’t passively absorb what’s available, rather they should be active contributors, helping to customise media and technology for their own purposes and that of their groups and communities. Web 1.0 provided us with news generated by large corporations, webpages that were static and rarely updated, and encouraged a passive relationship between the web master (or producer) and the site users (or audience). Whereas web 2.0 has revolutionised this relationship, creating a wider more social conversation between producers and audiences, conversations among audience groups, and within the wider world wide web.
- When considering developing a new website or perhaps re-visiting your developed website, the first place to start is with the basics. The What, Why and Who. What do you envisage your website doing? What do you hope to get out of your website? And who is going to want to visit your website? In other words: what is your vision and aims for your website and who is your online audience?
- A Visions statement should be meant to inspire, energise and create captivating picture of where you see your website going. This should be a clear motivating message that communicates how you want your website visitors to think of you and your museum, the impression that you want to leave your virtual visitors and importantly what your aspirations for the website are for now and the future. Your vision is communicated through the way your website is developed, the platform you use, the functionality and navigation, as well as the design of your site.
- Perhaps the most important step in the whole planning process is your goals. There is no point chartering a boat if you haven’t worked out where you want to go? We cannot change what we cannot measure, the only way you can tell if your website is successful if to have an efficient goal or set of goals. Your goals will describe what you are trying to achieve with your website. These should revolve around both your vision for your website and of course your mission, vision and aims for your Museum and marketing strategy. Your website aims should consider what you want your visitors to be able to do while navigating through your website, and what you want to achieve. This might include setting targets for new visitors/ audiences you have not engaged with before – such as international tourists and tour agencies or other museums based in the UK, or perhaps if you have items to sell the income generation you would like to raise through your website.
- And lastly, who you are trying to target, who is your website designed for, who is actually going to use the website? This can be broken down into key groups – tourists, local families, university students studying heritage degrees in Glasgow… the more precise you are about who you are targeting the easier it is then to plan for them. So the questions to consider is who do you want to attract to your website, why they will want to visit your website, and where they might come from. In this case if we take the example of university students studying heritage at Glasgow university, then I would imaging they would want to visit the website for research and information that might help them understand the heritage of your local area, what resources are available to them through the museums website or through a visit to the museum itself, how they would be able to travel to the museum, and if there was any cheap accomodation for them in the area, and who they need to contact if they wanted to talk/ interview someone from the museum about the heritage of your local area. They are most likely to come through organic search engine searches – using terms like ‘Scottish heritage museums’ ‘Heritage research in …’ or use directories designed for heritage museums, or likely to check facebook and twitter for any museum pages. Understanding who your audience is, what they would want/need from you, and how they might find you is essential when considering your website promotion, and can be informed through your use of website analytics.
- What are the elements that make up a good, or effective, website? The 4 key elements to consider when you are developing or redeveloping your website are: Your Brand The Key elements – the big things which define your website The little touches – the small things that give your site an edge And Ease – the ease of use for you and your visitors.
- Your website needs to reflect your brand (or the image that you want to convey). Your Image/Brand is conveyed in that first impression you make when a new website visitors lands on your home page or internal page, depending on what they are looking for. In order to create an effective website then we need to look at how you are communicating the value and benefit of what your museum does. That there is an immediate connection made between you and the visitor, this can be communicated through the use of the right keywords, through clear and concise layout, or by inviting people to join your social network. The impact of your brand/image will be dependent upon the consistency of design across all your marketing and promotional tactics. So do you use the same logo across all online and offline tactics, do you use the same font type, colours and images? Finally, the most effective websites are those that have considered how people use websites, how they navigate around a site, and how functional and intuitive that site is. If a visitor to your website needs to think for a second ‘how do I do this?’ then your website is not a functional one.
- Capture and communicate the value and benefit your providing visitors. Make an immediate connection when visitors enter your site. Be consistent with your overall brand and communications. Create a beautiful, professional and highly- functional experience.
- Capture and communicate the value and benefit your providing visitors. Make an immediate connection when visitors enter your site. Be consistent with your overall brand and communications. Create a beautiful, professional and highly- functional experience.
- Capture and communicate the value and benefit your providing visitors. Make an immediate connection when visitors enter your site. Be consistent with your overall brand and communications. Create a beautiful, professional and highly- functional experience.
- Capture and communicate the value and benefit your providing visitors. Make an immediate connection when visitors enter your site. Be consistent with your overall brand and communications. Create a beautiful, professional and highly- functional experience.
- Your website needs to identify what the key elements of your site will be. What will define your site? Taking into consideration your website aims and audiences, what will make up the key elements of your site, will this be a calendar of activities and exhibitions to encourage local people and tourists to attend, is it a virtual exhibition – a gallery of images of your collection, so that international, regional and even local audiences can enjoy viewing your artefacts and engaging with the museum in a virtual way. Or is it to communicate news, the documentation of your current heritage project through a blog, or perhaps you want to encourage conversation and interaction through your social networks. The key elements you decide on will carry the success of your website, therefore it is important that you consider these at the beginning of any development or re-development of a website.
- What elements define your website? Calendar of exhibitions, events, activities Photo galleries Blogs News Social media content
- What elements define your website? Calendar of exhibitions, events, activities Photo galleries Blogs News Social media content
- What elements define your website? Calendar of exhibitions, events, activities Photo galleries Blogs News Social media content
- What elements define your website? Calendar of exhibitions, events, activities Photo galleries Blogs News Social media content
- Your website needs to take into account the ‘little touches’ which have the highest impact and can be the difference between a good website and an excellent website. The little touches are the elements which are not immediately obvious to your website visitors, but will have the biggest impact if they are not implemented effectively. This includes the navigation structure of your website. How easy and intuitive is it for new website visitors to find the information they need without having to think about where that information might be. This also includes things like the font type you choose, is it clear and easy to read or is it a little fancy, which looks pretty, but can’t be understood? The creative copy you use – the language you are using in text. Image selection is also very important, a picture speaks a thousand words after all. If you don’t already have professional photographs of your museum (outside and inside, or events/exhibitions/projects etc) then you need to make this a priority now. And the icons you use to encouage people to take an action, such as ‘sign up to our newsletter’ ‘follow us on twitter’ ‘book your ticket’ – what will these look like, where will they be placed on the page and how easy are they to understand?
- The Navigation Structure Font Selection Creative Copy Image selection and editing Icons
- The Navigation Structure Font Selection Creative Copy Image selection and editing Icons
- The Navigation Structure Font Selection Creative Copy Image selection and editing Icons
- The Navigation Structure Font Selection Creative Copy Image selection and editing Icons
- Your website has to be easy to use, for your website visitors but most importantly for you. There is no point in creating a website, where the front end is organised and intuitive, beautifully designed and structured, with ways to access information easily and from multiple channels, if the backend – your CMS system is highly confusing and off-putting. In today’s online world, the static website will get left behind, you have to have access yourself, or at least someone within the museum has to have access to the website to be able to update it as and when required. Gone are the days when you pay a web developer to update your website information, it is highly inefficient in terms of time and money. Therefore you need to make sure you use a CMS which suits your needs.
- How your website is designed can reveal a lot about you and your company. The usual problem is that the ‘look and feel’ of your site doesn’t reflect the brand you are trying to portray. Consider what your website is subconsciously telling your visitors. It is that first visit to your website, the first impression that your visitors and then potential museum visitors will have of you which is vital to communicating your brand. So let’s take a look at two examples…
- What do we feel this website for the Auckland Museum communicates to us?
- And the Traditional Heritage Museum in Sheffield…what does this tell us? Note the website addresses for both of these examples… which one are visitors likely to remember of the top of their heads?
- First let’s brainstorm some words that will sum up the impression you want to make on your website visitors. Second think about all the online elements you currently have, which you feel works really well for your current visitors? Lastly, note down any changes you would like to make to your website, or elements that you would like to add to your website.
- Working with web designers and developers can be a tricky business especially if you have never done so before. Some web development projects will run smoothly, but more often then not they tend not to be so simple. Deadlines will pass, content will slip, or technical difficulties will stall the process. The following are a number of tips to consider when working with a website designer. Try not to rush the process – as budgets are squeezed and deadlines tighten, which are unfortunately the two best ways to jepodise the quality of the work you get from the web designer. Producing an effective site, takes time. The longer you give your website developer to think, the better the site will work. Insist on seeing work in progress – Some web developers like to work in secrecy, this approach often leads to problems, if you don’t get to influence the look and feel of your site, then is there really any point in having one at all? It is much better to work collaboratively with your web developers, be involved in initial sketches, or draw up your own. Create a moodboard and site map. If in doubt test – You need to be confident in your website if you are going to refer customers to it. So if you are in doubt over any element of your website design or development, or you are in doubt of the advice your web developer is giving you, try testing the design. Test the mock website with some real users and look to get an impartial perspective on the problem. Don’t ask for multiple designs – a common mistake is to commission a website developer and ask them to produce multiple concepts at the start of the project. The problem here is that this will often lead to a less clear and thought-out single design, that the final result will take on various elements of multiple designs, leaving the website a bit confused. By working collaboratively with your website developer from the start will prevent this type of a problem. Don’t show a design around without explanation - setting on the final look and feel of your website can be a daunting prospect, especially if you are doing it for the first time. You will want to reassure yourself by showing it to colleagues, friends and even family members. Although the design is there to show your website design to as many people as possible, this can be unwise. Our perception of what is good and bad is very subjective, and you are more likely to get radical opinions on both sides from different people. You will have to show your design to someone, but rather then asking them ‘what they think’, explain the background to the project and the decision-making process used to produce the design, without this then all they can do is fall back on personal opinion. If you have set your vision, goals and mission for your website you could ask your ‘testers’ to comment on whether you have achieve your mission and vision and if your goals are achievable. Do they know what you want to achieve – even if you are working collaborative with your website developer, things can still go wrong. It is important then that all parties involved in the development of your website have a clear idea of what you are trying to achieve – again you vision, mission and goals come in particularly handy here. Define that target audience – do everything you can to clearly communicate as much information about your audiences and users as possible to your website developer. This is where usability testing is invaluable. If your website designer and developer do not know who your target audience is then they could easily present the entire site in the wrong way. But it should be pointed out that it is not just the web developer who needs to have a clear idea of who the target audience is, you do to. Don’t overwork the design – Because design is subjective, you can never create the perfect design, you can ‘tweak’ ‘adjust’ and ‘modify’ to get your site ‘just right’, but you can never get ‘just right’. You might get to like it personally, but does that matter if the site can’t do its job in attracting visitors and enabling them to complete your goals. Also, its not a one-shot deal in terms of getting the design right. You will probably find that there are all sorts of things which can be approved and changed once people start to interact with it anyway. I would recommend, if possible, to consider budgeting a small amount for re-design works once the project has been completed. Work as an ongoing partnership – many website owners will commission a web developer then walk away once it has been delivered, but this prevents any ongoing developer based on user analysis. You should continue to work with your website developers and designers after the launch of your website, this can allow for re-design, fixes and any administration to tie up. Focus on problems not solutions – stick to your respective roles, it is your role to pose the question – i.e. the website development, and to identify the problems. The web developer is responsible for finding a solution to your question and solving any problems. Avoiding offering a solution, means you give the website developer greater freedom to suggest alternatives that might be better then your own suggestions. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but suggestions which would increase the effectiveness of your website by improving the relationship with your website developers.
- At the risk of stating the obvious, put quiet simply a content management system is a system that manages content. It is the simplicity of what a CMS does that has created confusion for potential buyers of such a system. There is enough ambiguity in its definition to enable all kinds of products to masquerade as content management systems. To fully understand what a CMS is and does, we have to define What we are referring to when we talk about content What do we mean by ‘management’ and What we mean by ‘system’. What is content? Content is in essence, any type of digital information. It can be text, images, graphics, video, sound, documents, records, music, etc, in other words, anything that is likely to be managed in an electronic format. What is content management? This is effectively the management of the content described before, by combining rules, processess and/or workflows in such a way that its electronic storage is deemed to be ‘managed’ rather then ‘un-managed’. What is the CM System? The system is a tool or combination of tools that facilitate the efficient and effective production of the desired outcome of using the managed content.
- There are plenty of open source systems available for free or at a competitive monthly rate. These are great if you are starting out, as they are engineered to be used by people who might have limited technical knowledge of building websites, such as myself, they ease you into the world of website development. They are also excellent tools for people who are looking to re-develop their website, even if you already have a website platform, or perhaps had your site designed by a web developer, don’t be afraid to check out your options. You might find that the platform you have now works well for you and your group, but then again you might find that an open source CMS offers you more flexibility, both in terms of creative design and adding content, especially dynamic content. But make sure you browse, experiment, test and review, these systems. Every open source CMS has it’s own unique offerings and different operating systems. Make sure you select one which works best for you. Remember EASE. Moonfruit – FREE a system that is designed for everyone, it lets you customise the style and layout of your site, offers an excellent drag and drop functionality, and offers additional support through resources, guides and tip sheets. Joomla – FREE Is one of the most powerful open source content management systems in the world. it can be used easily to manage every aspect of your website from adding content and images to updating a product catalogue to processing credit card details. Drupal – You can build everything from personal blogs to enterprise applications. This is free, and as a part of the open source community is constantly being improved upon by thousands of people from around the world. Pligg – An open source CMS that you can download and use for free. It provides social publishing software that encourages people to register on your website so that they can submit content and connext with other users. Pligg will enable you to start your own social publishing community.
- With a content management system you do not require the skills of a skilled programmer, to write HTML or like coding. Using CMS allows you to easily manage creation, modification, and removal of contents from a web site. The features of a content management system varies , but generally includes, web-based publishing, format management, revision control, indexing, search and retrieval. As CMS is based online through web browsers gone are the days of the centralised website, you can access your site from any browser or computer with your own unique login and password. As CMS uses templates for website structure and design, any updates or changes to colours, design, or navigational structures will be updated across the site automatically. As content is stored separate from design, the content created by all of your authors will be presented with the same consistent design. Through CMS your navigation is automatically generated and adjusted when you make any changes. With unique login’s you can assign roles and permissions to the individuals to prevent them from editing content they are not authorised to change. Most CMS are integrated with online applications and widgets such as forums, polls, ecommerce structures, search tools, news management and social media and networking. Most importantly CMS allows you to take control of your website, forget outsourcing to designers who will maintain control, hosting and maintaining your own website will allow you to frequently make the necessary changes in-house without having to wait for your designer to do so.
- DESCRIPTION: An internationally renowned art museum and one of the most significant architectural icons of the 20 th century, the Guggenheim Museum is at once a vital cultural sector, an educational instituion, and the heart of an international network of museums. Visitors can experience special exhibitions of modern and contemporary art, lectures, performances and film screenings, classes, and daily tours. The Guggenheim Museum is an ever-growing institution devoted to the art of the 20 th century and beyond. The website acts as a front door or gateway to the five museums. A simple menu bar at the top of the site allows for navigation between locations and the Foundation as well. Within the individual museum sites the navigation is more complex, reflecting the unusually deep content of the sites, which allows visitors to browse the online collections of each museum. A blog like editorial format is used for news of current exhibitions, events and activities. The challenge set for the website designers was to elevate the Guggenheim as a recognised leader among international visual arts institutions in order to increase visits, support donations and membership and build awareness for the Guggenheim Foundation. All using Joomla! 1.5 – one of the most robust of all Open Source CMS.
- Example CMS back end, Moonfruit.
- Considering how your website is designed is imperative towards creating an effective website. You have 10 seconds to grab people’s attention – CLICK MOUSE less if your website is burdened with large graphics or flash say, if your website takes 4 seconds to download then you have even less time to grab your visitors attention.
- ADD IN SATISFACTION Customers and audiences are becoming increasingly discerning which is why we need to persuade people to participate and engage, you need to grab their attention, interest them in how your offering can benefit them, and then persuade them to take the action you want them to take, such as buying your product or visiting your museum. When using an online resource, particularly websites, design is key to grabbing a visitors attention and interest. When assessing your current website or developing a new website the AIDA S marketing tool is an great starting point for organisations or web developers. How does your website design capture people’s attention, interest and desire, and what action do you want your visitors to take when visiting your website - satisfaction .
- Attention You need to be quick and direct to grab people’s attention. Determining the purpose and function of your site first will help engage people and focus visitor’s attentions on what the website can do for them. Bear in mind is that people will enter your site from any one of your pages. So you need to make sure that whichever page they enter through, the headlines, design, and navigation grab their attention. Make sure your content is: Honest Relevant Tasteful; and Clear Keep their attention level high by making a statement making an offering asking a question relaying facts And most importantly, make sure you tell your visitors who you are.
- Interest Generating Interest is perhaps the most challenging stage. The primary reason people go online is to get information, not to be advertised to. You need create interest through providing appropriate information. Free information that is relevant, constantly updated, exciting and different will spark visitor’s interests. news, articles, facts, newsletters, polls and other features to keep them coming back. To maintain interest you need to give your website visitor’s a reason to stay. If the information they were looking for was easily found, you might just get them to the next step. The next key ‘Interest’ generator is design. Your design and content will decide if visitors stay or leave your site. You must look professional. First impressions count. Likewise consistency is key, the content of your page needs to be relevant to the headline or the ad that first caught the visitors attention. Remembering that every page is a landing page and that you sometimes won’t know how the user got to the page in the first place, is important when considering design and consistency of your site, having optimised content on every single page is a key factor to your success.
- Interest and Desire go hand-in-hand. To create desire, you need to help your customers or audience understand what your offering can do for them in a real way. You need to appeal to their personal needs and wants. So how can you create desire? Let the customer or audience member experience the product or service first hand. Build in some element of interactivity. Get someone to experience your offering in some way or another so that they can desire to own it or be part of it. Whether that is a youtube video, a regular blog, a picture gallery, comments from previous visitors. If you can appeal to the emotional side of your visitor and translate the benefits they’ll receive, not necessarily the features, you are more likely to create desire. With the advent of Data Protection and secure payment systems, it’s essential that you underline your credibility and trustworthiness to your visitors– which could come in the form of reviews from the press or your audience members, or implement secure site software and demonstrating their logo clearly, if you are asking for a sale transaction, two ways of generating trust, and by extension desire. Another way of increasing desire is to offer incentives – give these visitors to your site a reason to choose you and not someone or something else.
- It is incredibly important that you be very clear about what action you want your customers or audience to take. Whatever the action is; subscribe to a newsletter, recommend to a friend, buy something, create the attention on it, get interest, build desire, then ask for the action. You must ask for the action you want to be performed – if you want them to ‘click’ put that down clearly. Ask for the action. This is point where you should reinforce the fragile trust structure with guarantees, with data protection assurances, secure payment site logos or privacy statements. This should be the easiest part, because at this point you have almost convinced them, and they have the increasing desire to close the deal, to get in contact or buy. So don’t make this harder then it needs to be. Make your call to action as clear, as visible and as easy as possible. If your call to action say’s “call us now” display your phone number right there, don’t make them search for it. Don’t make them waste another click, require a minimal amount of work, and avoid aggravating your visitor.
- AIDA is the framework for good marketing, sales and website development, but if you fail to satisfy, then all the other letter’s don’t add up to much else then letters. Satisfaction provides the critical closure for relevance. When promoting online, an environment in which taking action is the only tangible, measurable things that your visitor can do, is only partly about capturing attention. You also need to consider retention, attention and retention. When you complete the AIDA model with Satisfaction, you complete the retention loop by making the process wholly audience-centred. So how do you satisfy? By identifying your central message, what makes you relevant to your audiences, and communicating that relevantly, by remaining true to your word both online and offline. Satisfaction can also relate to your measurement of impact, success and monitoring your goals. If you have happy audiences, then you have achieved what most of us would say we work towards achieving, creating enjoyable experiences, where people feel that they were glad you caught their attention, that you are interesting enough to visit, that their desire to visit you was justified, and they are happy/glad/pleased/delighted they took the action to visit you. http://www.grokdotcom.com/2007/03/15/aidas-the-relevance-of-satisfaction/
- This is where we begin to really think about the goals of your website. What do you want to achieve with your website, what do you want your visitors to achieve, and how are we going to make this happen? This is where segmentation of your visitors and the targeting of your offerings becomes important. And where your vision and your target audience you identified at the start come into play. You’ll have noted down your segmented audiences and have a list of your offerings, now you need to pair the two together, along with the type of offering, information or motivation that the individual within this group may have when engaging with your museum.
- What can you tell me based on how each example has created their website who their target audiences are?
- Good visual design – a clean and simple design is all you need. First impressions are key, and good design alone won’t keep a visitor on your site, and eye catching design will grab their attention long enough to take a look around though. Thoughtful interface – the foundation of any good website. Take into consideration your average user. Create an image in your mind if who your ‘average web visitors’ might be. Be sure you offer everything on your site that they would want to find out before engaging with you. Primary Navigation – links to the key areas of your site across the top, bottom or side of your website is essential, include your logo and links to the main sections of your website. Be consistent – make sure that is in the same spot across your site. Repeat Navigation in the footer – if you use flash or images it’s extra important for you to have a navigation bar in the footer. It makes it as easy as possible for people to find the content they are looking for. This is also an area where you can add additional information which does not fit into your main sections of your website. Meaningful content – you may design a pretty eye-catching website, but if the content is no good, you can guarantee visitors won’t stick around. When writing copy for your website it’s important to provide helpful, knowledgeable information about your museum, offerings and services etc. A solid ‘About’ Page – usually one of the most popular web pages. People are curious – they want to know who is behind the organisation. Include information on your background, how it pertains to what you do now for instance. Help to create a personal bond with potential visitors. Contact Information – nothing can turn off a prospective visitor more than not being able to find a way to contact you. You want to give more then one way to be contacted. These make you more ‘real’. Search Function – if you have a large website a search field is very helpful. Google offers a search tool bar that you can install into most websites. Sign Up/ Subscribe – if you’re offering consistent information you’ll want to make it as easy as possible for people to sign up for updates. Site Map – great for your visitors to find the information that they are looking for, and for Search Engine spiders. Web optimised images – save your images in a compressed format, 300 dpi is the standard for print, for websites it’s more like 72dpi – enables a quicker download time. Programmes such as Adobe Photoshop save options for you to save images for the web. Statistics, Tracking, Analytics – this is a behind the scenes element and not one your likely to know about or notice as a web visitor, but as a website owner it is crucial. Enabling tracking means you get to know how often people visit your site, how people are finding your website, what search terms they are finding you under, what websites link to you, which are your popular web pages and how long people stay on your website. If you want to monitor your website’s performance and figure out how you can improve your site web analytics is essential.
- Based on this the key website rules to emerge are establishing trust between yourself and your visitor, to communicate how your organisation or offering can make the visitor’s life better in some way offer your visitor’s a clean, simple and easy experience avoid making the user think unnecessarily, which can apply to navigation, content and the function of your website Create a design to establish you and your businesses professionalism clearly show your visitors the way to accomplish their goals without being confusing help visitors find what they need and then ask them to take an action.
- Search Engine Optimisation is an essential element of any web marketing strategy. There are thousands of ways in which to increase traffic and visitors to your site, but like all things technological there are simple tips you can put in place yourself, and then some highly technical strategies which will require a higher level of knowledge and understanding. SEO is a set of processes that collectively work to increase website visibility by increasing search engine rankings. There is no exact science to SEO. The major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) use a crawler to look at a particular website, and algorithms to analyse the site. What is considered successful SEO – processes that result in significant rankings (page 1 – 3 on Google). Remember a website must be found to be seen. Do people know who you are well enough to search for you? Do they trust you enough to engage with you? Have you built good will through community participation? What makes your site remarkable enough for others to talk about?
- What is search engine optimisation? Web pages appear in search engine results because their content matches the search words that users have input into Google, jeeves, bing… etc. The key to SEO is writing pages that use these keywords and securing links from other pages to show how important your page is compared to others. By considering SEO as an important element of your eMarketing strategy, then you are ensuring that your website gets into those first ten search results. It’s important to understand the difference between ‘unique’ and ‘paid-for’ searches. All your SEO tactics will serve to increase traffic to your site through unique searches – when people input key words to generate results, rather then inputting directly the name of your museum for instance. Paid-for searches on the other hand enable your website to sit at the top of the search results page, usually in a highlighted box. Google offers Google Adwords, which I will cover in this section later. In some ways SEO is a simple Quality Control for Websites, meaning that when people search for ‘museums, Scotland, Highland’ their results return your museums and not websites for garden hoses in Baltimore!
- The other term you are likely to hear a lot in SEO, is Search Engine Spiders, or simple Spiders or Web crawlers, there are lots of different terms. The search engines use precise mathematical formulas or programs to process data, these formulas are called algorithms. A ‘Spider’ is an automatic program (algorithm) that is run by a search engine system that crawls your site for information. A ‘Spider’ visits your website and crawls your pages, reads your Title Tag, the content of your site, looks for keywords, and follows the links your pages contain. It then returns that information to a central depository where information is stored and indexed. An index is like the contents page of a very large book, when some one searches for a particular word or term or phrase (Keywords) the search term is looked up in the index and information is delivered to the searcher. Millions of pages are indexed everyday and you want to make sure your website is indexed with a high ranking so web visitors can find you easily. SE Spiders are incredibly bright, they can not only crawl your page and see all the relevant data, they scan for relevant keywords, their frequency and location in the content of your pages. They can also detect artificially ‘keyword stuffing’ or spamming. A spider can also detect how often you update your website, after they visit your site a number of times, an algorithm sets up a revisit schedule. This is the reason it is wise to be consistent in the frequency of your posting, updates etc.
- It’s all semantics really. The first, and best place to start with SEO is with words, keywords and phrases. These words are collected and evaluated by SE’s such as Google to ascertain what your website is about. So where do we start when deciding on our keywords, the words that sum up what you do and who you are. Decide on your word mapping tool – there are a lot of keyword research tools online, you may want to do some research and investigate which tools work best for you. I personally find Google’s tools the easiest to use. Deciding on the words to use Grouping your keywords Avoiding ‘Keyword Stuffing’
- Google Ad words is your new best friend. The tools that Google offers is unrivalled and most of it is free. If you haven’t already signed up for a Google mail account, then I suggest you do when you get home or back to work. A googlemail account enables you to access essential emarketing tools such as Google analytics, and Google adwords. But it also runs a powerful keyword research tool. MORE ON GOOGLE AD WORDS _ TIP SHEET
- Google adwords offers you a whole host of fun SEO things to do. But for the purposes of Keyword research, we will need to use the Keyword Tool, under the reporting and tools tab.
- The keyword tools enables you to search by keywords or by website. I always find it easier to allow Google to do some of the work first, and input your website into the search engine first. Here I have used a heritage museum in Durham as an example, but obviously you would input your own website here. (In fact at the end of the initial keyword research phase, it is good to check to see what types of keywords your competitors are using, for instance, looking up keywords from other heritage based museums, such as this. You might find that there is a keyword relevant to you, which has been overlooked previously). So, this particular example shows us that ‘School Trips in the UK’ is a high competition keyword, with 590 monthly global searches, and 480 local monthly searches. (My local is Highland.) If you click on the highlighted keywords/phrases it will automatically take you to the Google search page, so you can see what this search will look like and where your website features. The highest ranking keyword here is ‘School Trips’ with 40,500 global monthly searches and 14,800 local monthly searches. What this means is that ‘School Trips’ is an important keyword for your website, however you couldn’t rely solely on this word to guarantee page visitors, you need to match this keyword with a number of other keywords relevant to your website in order to increase your Google ranking (your placement in the Google search). You are looking for a list of 50 – 100, which you can then narrow down.
- The keywords I input here were: Theatre performing arts pitlochry visiting pitlochry Scotland gallery music comedy concerts summer workshops Every word you use MUST be relevant to your organisation, products, services and content on the website. There is absolutely no point in using the words ‘Cat Toys’ or ‘Garden Hose’ if your website is about a heritage museum. To start to narrow down your list from 100 to a more manageable and relevant number, we first look at the popularity of the keywords you have selected. Again we return to Google Adwords keyword tool. In this case I input some keywords instead of the website tool. These keywords were: Museum heritage museum scotland highlands exhibitions heritage exhibitions art exhibitions school trips scottish heritage As you can see they have indexed these words and then suggested a number of alternative keywords as well. On deciding your keywords you want to consider first the relevancy of that word, and then the popularity of that word. In this case museum might have a low competitiveness, but is a very popular search term, with 16million hits a month globally and 2.2 million hits locally. The popularity of a keyword is the number of searches performed for each relevant keyword and are the variations of the keywords that are searched most often. Competitiveness relates to how easy it is for your website to get to the first page of an organic search result using this keyword. As you can see here, if I were to use ‘Museum’ and ‘Scotland’ as my two keywords I would find it hard to get my website to the top of an organic search result. However if I were to include variations of these keywords, such as ‘Heritage Museum’, ‘Highlands’ and even ‘holidays in Scotland’ I might have a better chance of getting into the top ten websites recommended by a Search Engine. This is where the element of semantics comes into play, it might appear to be a trivial exercise at first glance, listing variations of your keywords and phrases, but this is the more critical tasks an organisations can take to increase its organic search ranking.
- The terms to your left ‘Top Searches’ refer to keywords which relate to your search term ‘comedy’ – and how relevant this keyword is to comedy. The terms to your right ‘Rising Searches’ refer to the popularity of this search term, and is represented by a percentage to indicate the growth in the use of this keyword.
- After narrowing down the list of your keywords, then you need to group the words be themes. Select one primary keyword along with 4 or 5 keywords/phrases. You can then assign these groups to individual landing pages throughout your website. So in this case I have grouped together: What and where I am – which I would most likely assign to my home page. A Tourist Theme – which I would assign to my home page and my what’s on page Comedy – I would assign to my comedy page What I do – which I would assign to my what’s on page and exhibition/events pages. Grouping your keywords enables you to: Have a predetermined set of keywords to use when you are creating or redeveloping your website, adding a new page, or section to your site. Cutting down the time on researching new keywords in the future. Have a more comprehensive overview of the words and phrases that your own visitors (online and offline) might be using to search for what you offer. Enable you to think about the types of words and phrases visitors use to describe what you do, which can come in handy for other marketing activities, such as writing good copy for the press, media, or for marketing copy. Enable you to think in a more structured approach to how your website is mapped out for online visitors. (Can you group your keywords effectively now for your website?)
- Start thinking about the types of singular words and 2 or 3 keyword phrases that best describe what you do, who you are, what you are offering, and most importantly the types of words you know people are using to search for what you are offering. Jot down a couple of keywords/phrases to the time being, the aim is to return to this worksheet as you progress your SEO keyword research.
- You can find all the information you need to know about your SEO and other’s SEO from viewing the source code of a page.
- To view the source code for any website, simply click on View in your website browser, and select Source… This will allow you to view the HTML coding of the website, what you need to pay attention to in the source code is the TAGS, including title, description and keyword. In most, if not all CRM systems, entry boxes for Headlines, as well as your titles, descriptions and keywords will be made available to you, you do not need to edit any of the HMTL data directly.
- This is the source code for the British Museum. We are looking for the TITLE TAG. You’ll find the title, description and keyword meta tags in your source code. A meta tag describes the type of data your inputting, it serves as an information label. So the meta title tag describes the Title of your website. The title being the data. The title tag is the most important of the 3 meta tags, this plays a large role in indexing your site. The title is the first thing Search Engines see when determining what the page is about. It is the first thing that potential visitors see when looking at a Search Engine listing. The title tag as it appears for the British Museum is ‘The British Museum - Welcome to the British Museum’.
- So our title tag appears here in the title of the search result. If it is possible to add in a keyword or two, then excellent, but avoid keyword stuffing. Most importantly you need to include the name of your organisation or the title of your webpage.
- The title also denotes the title across the top of your web browser, which helps web visitors to know what and where they are.
- I’ve already mentioned that there are 3 key meta tags, and we have already discussed Title Tags. The other two important meta tags are the Description and Keyword Tags. Now, it is debateable as to whether SE spiders use description tags for their rankings at all, but these are important as your description is listed in your search results. The description is what your users read to decide whether to click through to your website or not. Let’s continue with the British Museum example… Here under meta name=description we can read ‘Welcome to the British Museum website. The Museum houses a vast collection of world art and artefacts and is free to all visitors. Search highlight objects of the collection and view current research projects. Find information about visiting, including admissions and opening times, events and exhibitions, gallery guides and teaching resources.’
- And on our Google search we can see that the first 2 sentences of the meta description has been pulled through from the source code on the website. ‘ Welcome to the British Museum website. The Museum houses a vast collection of world art and artefacts and is free to all visitors.’ Why do you think that the British Museum choose these two sentences as the most important in encouraging people first to click through to their website and consider visiting the museum? As you can see here there are different descriptions for each of the British Museum search result options. If we choose to select the What’s On link… It reads ‘Exhibitions and events at the British Museum including Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, Picasso to Julie Mehretu, Buddhism across Asian and other touring…’
- The meta keyword tag – due to keyword stuffing many Search Engines disregard the keyword tag, but it doesn’t hurt to include them. Like the Title and Description Tags, you will be presented with an opportunity to insert keywords into your source code through your CRM. As you can see from the British Museum website they have used keywords to give SE’s an idea of what can be found in the British Museum: London, Britian, World, Eqypt, Asia, Greece, Roman, Africa, Oceania, Americas, Prehistory, Europe, Prints, Drawings, Coins, Medals, Free, visiting, 1753, research, collection, picasso, julie mehretu, buddhism. But there are still plenty of other places you can use your keywords.
- The heading tag is a very important element in helping users, web browsers and SE’s know where the major key points of your content are. Heading tags label your headlines so that SE’s can recognise it as ‘important’ on your web page. The heading tags will make your headline bolder so it will stand out. You should always have a main heading, or headline, for every webpage. In terms of SEO we are making it easier for SE spiders to determine what your webpage is all about. The SE doesn’t have to guess, your heading will denote the main topic of the page, along with your title, description and keywords. In this case the heading tag has been used for the ‘Visiting’ headline, and the functions along the lefthand side are also characterised as headings.
- Adding Alternative Text or Alt Attributes for images serves 2 purposes. For SEO – a brief but descriptive alt attribute places additional text to your source code when SE spiders are indexing your page, so this is another area you can use those keywords. But it is not an opportunity to stuff this alt attribute with keywords, as the second purpose… helps the visually impaired and blind to access images using a screen reader, while they can’t see the image they are able to know what it is on the page, by reading your alt attribute. When you are adding images to your website through your CRM you will be prompted to give a title, description, alternative text, etc while you are uploading or after you have uploaded the file to your CRM. Always think about how your Alt Attribute can be used to help people understand what they are seeing and how this might help SE spiders to understand what this page is about.
- Links are very important to your SEO strategy, and we will look at link building after this section. At this point however, assigning title attributes to your links is another great way to use up some of your keywords. Title attributes on links appear when you hover your mouse over a link, like images. Title attributes on image links are essential but they are equally as important for text links. Much like adding alternative text for images, when creating a link on your web page your CRM system should prompt you for Link Text. Use this descriptively also, here for the link ‘Coming Forth Day by Day’ under the Event Highlights box, the title attribute reads ‘ View more details about the performance’. I now know as a visitor to the web page where I am being redirected to and what I can expect when I get there, before I decide to click through to this link. Likewise with the title attribute for the image link Picasso to Julie Mehertu, the title attribute text reads ‘More about the exhibition Picasso to Julie Mehretu: modern drawings from the British Museum Collection’. You can see from these two examples how image text can be used differently, there is less description for the text based link, as this gives us and the SE’s more data to determine what and where the link leads to. While the Image link gives a greater description, as the image will not be understood by SE spiders or people with visual impairments.
- XML sitemaps are used by SE’s to index your site. A sitemap is a way of organising a website, identifying the URLs and the data under each section. Previously the sitemaps were primarily geared for the users, however Google’s XML format, introduced in 2005, is designed for SE’s, allowing them to find the data faster and more efficiently. XML also summarises how frequently a particular website is updated, and records the last time any changes were made. This allows SE’s to make more accurate rankings and searches. Through the XML protocol, which has now been adopted by Yahoo and Microsoft, XML will become a standard feature of all website creation and development. SE’s rank a page according to the relevance of its content to particular key words, but until the XML format, there were instances when the content was not properly picked up.
- To create your own XML sitemap and keep the SE’s informed of changes to your site, check out this free online sitemap generator.
- Content relevant to your main page or your site topic is THE most important SEO aspect of your pages. If the readable text on the page isn’t relevant to the target keywords all the SEO work you’ve done so far will be futile. This is where your keywords really come in handy, you want to use your keywords, but remember keyword density, it still needs to be readable. The key is to make it relevant to your title, headings and description. This will really determine whether people actually stay on your website as well.
- Links are essential to boosting your SE rankings. The algorithm Google uses for determining page rank takes into account many different elements and is constantly changing, one item is the number of links pointing to your website. The more websites with links to your own pages the greater opportunity of getting up into the first Google search page. You can use websites such as wholinkstome.com for a full and free links analysis, but an easy way to get started is by using the extension link:www.yourwebsite.com in a Google search. As you can see from this example there are a couple of links from within the British Museum website that appear here, but there are also a number of other sites, including CBS news, the BBC, Guardian and Wikipedia. Try this little trick out when you get the next chance and see who is linking to your website.
- The point of linking SEO is to have as many different websites and as many different web platforms linking to your website or to specific items on your website. The more links to and from your site will up your rankings, but remember your links need to be relevant, valid and of good quality. You can’t just link to anyone and you don’t just want anyone linking to you. To find out first who is linking to you a good place to start is http://wholinkstome.com/
- The office for national statistics statistical bulletin focused on Internet Access in 2010. This is what they found about internet activity. Based on a 3 month period….
- eMail campaigns are becoming a fast and effective tool for marketing and audience development strategies. The benefit of email campaigns is that you can really target and structure your mail outs, which is often costly and difficult through print. You can target your emails in a variety of ways, for instance to key groups, to certain demographics, to those in certain geographic locations, or through attendance. There are hundreds of online email campaign systems you can subscribe to for free, which will allow you to design, send and track your email campaigns. Email campaigns are a viable way to grow and expand your business or organisation. So what are the benefits of email campaigns? You’re able to communicate important news to people who wouldn’t otherwise know about it. It will keep you on the minds of potential audiences, customers or participants. It can make your sales process easier and more productive if you are an online or offline seller. It helps to get people to know you in a light and informal way. It helps start conversations with your target audience.
- Online tool to make it easy to sell tickets to all kinds of events.
- Retains existing customers and helps to expand your audience, It’s expensive to find new customers, CRM provides an insight into the behaviour of your audience, Allows you to segment and target your audience effectively, Enables you to provide the best experience for your audience.
- Drop box – is a free service that lets you bring all your photo’s, documents and videos anywhere. This means that any file you save to your dropbox will automatically save to your computer, phone and even the dropbox website. This makes it easier for you to share content with others, or use this is a backup, incase the computer breaks or something gets spilled all over it! This is a peace of mind.
- Yousendit – makes sending and receiving large files super fast and easy. Basically you sign up for an account, upload a file you want to send, through the dropbox website, from your desktop. Drop box stores the file securely and emails your recipient with a link to click on and download. Your recipient recieves the email notification, clicks on the link in the email and downloads the file.
- Freshbooks – is a online invoicing, time tracking and billing software you can use to manage the finances of your organisation. These applications work best if you have a large number of customers. If also enables people to be able to pay via paypal straight from the invoice.
- Wufoo is a system designed to collect information over the internet. It enables you to create contact forms, online surveys, and invitations so you can collect data, registrations and online payments without writing a single line of code yourself. they offered priced packages between $199 per month to $14.95 – they do also offer a free account which gives you access to 3 forms.
- According to Media Burst over 97% of text messages are read instantly, compared to 20% for emails. Media burst offers a SMS service for business marketing and promotion. They offer a number of products, for instance Textburst is designed for small business use, to promote products and talk to customers. Texts can be used to collect inbound enquiries, to send special offers, to confirm bookings or reservations, to update you with news. Text burst costs 5p per text message, there are no upfront costs or rental fees. Mediaburst offers a really easy to understand website, with loads of advice and help along the way. They signpost clearly the more technical stuff available.
- Once you have considered all your options and have a clear strategy in mind, then you need to pull everything together.
- Linking everything together so you can see clearly which tactics support which is a great way of being able to keep on top of multiple marketing tools. Select which emarketing tool will sit at the heart of your strategy, it is always a good idea to have a central hub of information, somewhere that you are always trying to get your visitors to go to. Traditionally this tends to be people’s websites, but it doesn’t have to be. It could be your blog, your facebook page, a profile on a directory, which ever tool you choose this should sit at the heart of your strategy, with everything else closely and clearly linked to it. But don’t forget that each emarketing tool can also have important links to one another too. For instance the external links that I am building could make for good content in my eNewsletters, or create an opportunity for these organisations to promote themselves through my enewsletter. My social media platforms tie directly in with my SEO and also contribute to eNewsletter content. And my analytics data helps me to develop both my SEO and website design.