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Developing Effective Information Architecture

March 30th, 2010

Information architecture is the most important and effective way to build website success, driving deliberate traffic in ways you deliberately want to showcase. The logistics and mechanics of good web design rely on information architecture. Think of it as your website’s blue print. How does your website guide information from page to page. What is the link structure and web content of the website as a whole? What are the website’s goals and who is the audience? Information architecture should be both conceptual (first) and organizational (second).

Web Site Family Tree
Similar to the structure of a family tree, information architecture links website content by their relationships to the primary page. The diagram, sketched out, is connected by lines to illustrate the relationship each web site page has between eachother. This illustrates the hierarchy of a website and helps the conceptual process before building a website.

Implementation
Once you’ve got the basic structure of a website, you can now begin to build it. For information architecture and user interface, it is all about navigational choices. Good information architecture can help direct users to certain areas of a website. For example, if a non-profit wants users to donate to their cause, information architecture will put the donation button in a prominent place where a user’s vision is sure to notice, hopefully swaying the navigational choice towards donation. Everything from link verbiage, placement, size, color, and imagery can affect a user’s choices on how they will navigate through a website.

Using design principles and tying them into web design through information architecture is an excellent foundation for website design. Designers should keep design principles in every step of website design, including link navigation and information architecture.

Viral Marketing

March 16th, 2010

The buzzword for viral marketing and “word of mouth” is common and popular among web 2.0. Using social media, you can create brand awareness towards your brand identity, and increase your product sales through viral marketing. Here are some tips and tricks on how to go viral.

  1. E-mail Marketing – E-mail marketing can go viral too. Just look at the loads of e-mail memes and chains that get passed around from inbox to inbox. You can use this to your advantage by manipulating your e-mail newsletters to make it easier to go viral. Make sure you include share links in your newsletter to make it easier for people to spread and share. Adding links to your other web presences will also help tie everything together and get more traffic to your business. Make sure you cross your t’s and dot your i’s by in turn, promoting your e-mail newsletter on your website, facebook, twitter, etc.
  2. Host Contests – This can be done in many ways. Two of the common platforms are through blogging and Twitter. You can create your own Twitter hashtag to track the contest tweets and watch your tweets go viral as people find out about the offer and retweet. The key is to have an exciting product or offer to giveaway that people will actually want. You can combine both twitter and blogging by linking to the blog giveaway post and promoting it through twitter. Many companies find influential bloggers that have high social networking potential to host their products through a giveaway.
  3. Appeal to Emotions – Your message has to stand out and appeal to the emotions. This is the number one way to create a good viral marketing message. Equal parts psychology and marketing strategy, the message has to stand out in people’s minds. Your message will not go viral unless it stops people in their tracks, and is powerful enough to make people want to share it. Your message needs to have a strong emotional connection with the reader. One way to do this is to create a public service announcement or tie it in to a charity or cause. Make people want to care, and make them realize they do care.

Understanding the psyches of consumers and potential consumers to spark viral marketing takes thorough market research, the ability to carve out a demographic and niche, and the willingness to try new things.

SEO: Why You Should Care

February 27th, 2010

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an internet marketing strategy that helps your website rankings on search engines. With search engine optimization, you can manipulate your web design content by using keywords or phrases that search engine spiders can find. This will allow your website to rank higher on search engines and thus drive more traffic to your page, positioning your website and business among the top rank of searches.

Keywords
Placing keywords and phrases into your website is one of the main strategies of SEO. A good tool to figure out proper keywords is theGoogle Adwords Keyword Tool. This tool gives you data on monthly search volumes per keyword variations to give you an idea of the best keyword to use. Make sure to place your keyword frequently throughout your website or web article. At least ten times per 500 word article is a good basic amount for search engine optimization.

Meta Tags
Meta tags exist within the html of a website and provides a meta description and meta keywords hidden within the html tag of your website. Search engine crawlers can see this information and optimize your website based on your description and keywords. This can help your SEO by giving information about the content of your website that search engine spiders and crawlers can find.

Text Links
If your website has image links, flash or javascript navigation, be sure to add text links within your website for search engines. Text links, and text in general, are how search engine spiders find your site. Deep links are hypertext links that link to a specific page of a website, rather than the main page itself. Deep links from a high ranking site are sure to help your SEO.

Fresh Content
It’s important to keep your website fresh with content, keeping your website relevant to search engines. A great way to offer fresh content is by starting a blog on your website. This provides a simple way to update your website, as well as provide keywords for SEO. Quality and unique content is important for search engine optimization so it might be a good idea to hire a copywriter or SEO specialist. Contact Tempo Creative for your internet marketing and SEO needs and we can help get the job done.

Marketing to Women: Strategies

February 15th, 2010

Since the 50s, with the image of the modern day house wife, women have been seen at the forefront of major shopping decisions in consumer spending, particularly with groceries, beauty products, and clothing. They balance the household income, pay the bills, and influence their husbands on what to purchase. Considering their purchasing power, targeting women in your marketing plan is a smart idea that could provide monetary rewards!

Mommy Bloggers

Times have changed since the 50s, but women are still spending. Enter: Mommy Bloggers. Typically a stay at home mom, this vast genre of blogging has a wide reaching community of women who help provide for their family. Many mommy bloggers host giveaways sponsored by companies for readers to win free products. It

Year-end Business Resolutions – Where Do You Want to Go in 2009?

February 5th, 2010

It

Web vs. Bricks

February 5th, 2010

No doubt, it

The Human Touch: Using Video Spokesperson on Your Website

February 5th, 2010

When you walk into a retail business, whether you are grocery shopping, shoe shopping, or buying furniture, what

Site to Site – How Does Your Web Presence Compare to the Competition?

February 5th, 2010

Before you know your competition

Defining Your Conversions

February 5th, 2010

There are very few businesses today that do not maintain some kind of web presence and most are doing everything they can to increase that presence as best they can. Whether through SEO, PPC, or other methods the goal is to drive as much qualified traffic as possible to your website. But, what do you do once you get the traffic to the site. This is where well defined conversions play an important role.

When you plan your website or website upgrade you should think about what points of conversion you are looking for from visitors to the page. In other words, once you get them there – what do you want them to do. If its a simple sales site where a visitor can purchase and item and have it shipped or just download it, then an obvious point of conversion would be the completion of the sales transaction. However, these sites would be short sighted to only utilize this one action as a conversion goal. A satisfied client is likely to return for future purchases, but life can be very distracting. If only you had an email list for newsletters or sign-up list for special offers. Then you send periodic emails or updates to clients to make them aware of happenings with your site such as sales or new products etc

Building Your E-mail Marketing Following

February 5th, 2010

E-mail marketing is a cost effective way to build your business leads and get prospective customers to your small business. Adhering to ethical standards and making sure you are not spamming by allowing potential customers to actively sign up for the e-mail marketing newsletter is important and necessary. The trick to increasing your subscribers is to make your newsletter sign-up prominent on your website. Do this by adding repetition. Make sure the subscribe feature can be found on various pages throughout your website. For example, you can place the feature on a prominent section of the site and make sure it is eye catching enough for user interface to guarantee the reader takes notice, and then reiterate it on the footer section of your site for added effect. Some websites even have pop-ups that automatically appear once a site loads but be careful with this tactic as people often find pop-ups to be aggressive or annoying.

Another way to increase your e-mail marketing list is by offering something of value. People will be more willing to join a list if they get something out of it that they feel benefits them. Offering contests, discounts, or even a link to a free e-book is a great way to give back to a potential customer by letting them know you appreciate them. In doing so, you also give the positive impression that you give valuable information that will help entice and bring trust to your subscribers. A great relationship builder all around.

Make your content interesting. Your goal is to garner and keep people