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Your Web Site Should Have an Opinion** SiteBuilderNews - 5/02/2002 Issue ** Helping You Build A Better Website ================================================================= In This Issue of SiteBuilderNews: => 1. Editor's Note => 2. Article: Your Web Site Should Have an Opinion => 3. Site Builder Tip => 4. Sites for Site Builders => 5. Site Builder News ================================================================= SPONSOR AD: ================================================================= Your-Site: Superior, Affordable Web Hosting! * 50 MB Disk Space * 25 POP3 E-Mail Accounts * 6 Gigs Transfer * Your own cgi-bin * 24/7 FTP Access * 99.9% Guaranteed Uptime * Plus Much More! ONLY $5 PER MONTH! http://www.sitebuildernews.com/yoursite.php ================================================================= 1. Editor's Note ================================================================= Hello SiteBuilders, This week Gerry McGovern gives us more great advice for creating the content of your site, whether it be information or products. Also see this week's Site for Site Builders for a very useful resource - a web developer's search engine that indexes thousands of pages from web developer sites and forums. -- Dan Grossman edi-@sitebuildernews.com ================================================================= ================================================================= Upgrade to receive HTML version of SiteBuilderNews! Subscribe for free at mailto:sitebuildernews-@topica.com ================================================================= 2. Feature Article: ================================================================= Your Web Site Should Have an Opinion by Gerry McGovern People want your opinion when they come to your Web site. They want to know why you think your products are so good. They want to know the latest news from your organization. They want to know why you are such a great company to do business with. A false myth has arisen on the Web, creating a picture of "power searchers." These rugged individuals wield a search engine to get to the facts. They scour the Internet daily, digging away at the data mountain, unearthing that content jewel from the 600 billion documents. In fact, these people are almost as rare as the content jewel. Average people who use the Web are conservative and impatient. They don't know exactly what they are looking for. Perhaps they are thinking of buying a notebook computer and wondering what issues they should consider. A Xerox PARC study describes this type of person as a "content gatherer." A recent report by Jared Spool of User Interface Engineering found that on the apparel and home goods Web sites he studied, many customers never even used search. The March issue of the IEEE CS Computer magazine reports on a study that paints a picture of a very conservative Web searcher: Despite commonly retrieving a large number of Web sites, users tend to view few results pages per query. This trend appears to be increasing with the majority of Web users not browsing beyond the first or second page of results. I have often said that while industrial societies suffer from scarcity, digital societies suffer from glut. In our digital economy, content has too often become a commodity. Digital content, with a reproduction cost close to zero, is being endlessly reproduced on the Web. There is too much content, and people are responding by becoming more conservative in how they consume it. This is a huge challenge for any organization wanting to succeed on the Web. How is your content going to stand out? How do you get conservative, impatient readers to look at your content? Having an opinion is a good start. An opinion puts things into context. Yes, people like the facts. What most people want, though, are the facts put into context. They want you to tell them why your product is so much better than your competitors'. They want to know what makes you so different. No, they don't want generic, marketing hyperbole, but they do want to be sold. Why else are they on your Web site? Commerce is selling with people. E-commerce is selling with content. Your content won't sell if it doesn't have an opinion and attitude. An intranet requires an opinion just as much as a public Web site. Staffers who use the intranet are equally conservative and impatient. They don't jump for joy when they see 100 technical papers on a particular subject area. They are attracted to statements such as, "Of these 100 papers, here are the 5 you should read first." Of course, opinion is subjective. But if people don't want subjective opinions, then why do they still buy The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, or The Irish Times? ----------------------------------------------------------------- Gerry McGovern is a Web consultant and author. His most recent books are Content Critical and The Web Content Style Guide, published by Financial Times Prentice Hall. His personal Web site is at http://www.gerrymcgovern.com ================================================================= Reach thousands of subscribers! For ad details and prices, email: mailto:edi-@sitebuildernews.com?subject=ad_inquiry ================================================================= 3. Site Builder Tip ================================================================= This Week's Tip: Are You Making $1 per Visitor? How many visitors do you get in one day? 100? Ok, great, at a goal of $1 per visitor (average), you are at $100/day or $36,500 per year. Wonderful! Whoa - Wait - How do you get that $1 per visitor? You need to figure out what your conversion rate is. After studying your stats, how many visitors does it take before you get a sale. If you are selling 10 $30 items per week with 700 visitors, then you are making $300 per week with 700 visitors and your conversion rate is 1.4%. You are receiving 43 cents per visitor instead of $1. You need to add products (or affiliate programs), etc. AND, you need to change your marketing techniques or web site design to raise that rate. Use this as a guide to help to measure your effectiveness and determine how to spend your time effectively. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Deborah Anderson, of AndersonCreations.com, teaches web design and internet marketing in addition to publishing Webmaster Tips Weekly. Subscribe free by sending a blank email to mailto:subsc-@webmaster-tips-weekly.com http://webmaster-tips-weekly.com/webtips ================================================================= 4. Sites for Site Builders ================================================================= Empty String - Web Developer's Search Engine Empty String only crawls the best Web Developer sites on the net which means that 100% of the information linked to is relevant to web development. A great place to go when you need information about a specific program or programming language (you can search each separately). Check it out at... http://www.emptystring.com/ ================================================================= 5. Site Builder News ================================================================= Ariba builds Web services momentum http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?e37334064&e=6592 AT&T to Provide Web Hosting Services to Hyatt Hotels http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?e37322674&e=6592 Are we set for a Web hosting reprise? http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?e37289529&e=6592 Hostway Acquires UK-Based Web Hosting Company http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?e37234298&e=6592 BEA, RIM to partner on Web services tool http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?e37225691&e=6592 Web Hosting News: NCInfraGard Selects InterCerve to Host Site http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?e37224985&e=6592 Web Hosting News: Galaxy Internet Services Announcement http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?e37146700&e=6592 ================================================================= ================================================================= Do you know someone who has a website or would like to create one? Forward them a copy of this eZine and urge them to subscribe! To subscribe send a blank email to: mailto:sitebuilderne-@topica.com ================================================================= ================================================================= Send suggestions and comments to: edi-@SiteBuilderNews.com Reach thousands of subscribers! For ad details and prices, visit our media kit at http://www.sitebuildernews.com/advertise.php SiteBuilderNews is © 2000-2001 Dan Grossman. All Rights Reserved. No part of this newsletter may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission. All guest articles are copyright their respective owners and are reproduced with permission. |
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