The internet has the capacity, sometimes, to divorce not just our minds from our bodies and siphon us into cyberspace but also our common sense.
When it comes to business models the internet seems to have managed to make us forget everything we knew in the Real World (RL for the acronym lovers) and slow down the length of time it takes us to re-learn it.
How else can we explain the fact that the number one selling tool in the universe is so underused on the internet that hardly anyone remembers to implement it. All right, I've played games long enough, time to get real and tackle exactly what I'm talking about.
In the real world before you change your mobile phone, splash out for that flat-screen plasma TV or set out to test-drive the latest muscle-car at your local dealer you first discuss it with your friends. That's because you're the product of an evolutionary process that has conditioned us, as a species, to pool our resources in order to reach a decision that is far more informed than anything we could have managed on our own.
More brains than one
Left alone, on an island, without even a Man Friday to talk to our store of knowledge and our ability to make informed judgements would soon deteriorate to the point where the quality of our decisions would jeopardise our chances of survival.
The net is no different. We see a product that's hot, a web page we like or a news item that's topical and our immediate reaction is to tell a friend (or several). With the internet and email our telling a friend becomes both immediate and personalised. Except that when we're in full flow, buried in reading the text on a page, checking out the stats on a sports car or weighing up the merits of a particular product we're loathe to leave the page in order to load up our email programme and spend time firing-off a message or two.
Savvy website designers who understand this have responded with the 'Tell A Friend' facility, a nifty applet that, at a click, allows you to tell your friend or friends what you've found on the net. That way you and I, as sophisticated consumers, carry on with our online activity and still engage in the critical knowledge-sharing interaction that's a characteristic of our species.
This is a classic win-win scenario. We do our bit. Website owners get to benefit by recommendations and fresh traffic and our friends find out about websites they probably wouldn't have come across as quickly (if at all).
In website design parlance a 'Tell A Friend' facility is 'empowerment'. It's allowing the surfer to increase their interaction with the website and maximise their return from its use.
Not as easy as it looks
Of course, had all this common-sense behaviour really been as common as that I would not have written this article and, in all probability, you would not be reading it. I have no idea why website owners do not ask for it to be implemented more frequently, but I do know that when they do they don't always get it right.
Remember the reason we didn't use our email client to send a message to our friends in the first place is because by the time we find what we want on the net and launch ourselves into the web pages we're in too deep to readily want to interrupt what we're doing and send a message to anyone.
There are two types of 'Tell A Friend' facility you can use. The first takes you to another page where you can type in your friend's email address, your own and (usually) a brief message. The second type allows you to do all this, prompts you for a message right from the page you're surfing.
It is the clever use of the second type implemented by web design experts, PQL (http://www.pqlwebsolutions.co.uk/), that proved its mettle when it allowed the pages it appeared on at Cool Publications, an internet publisher website, to increase their traffic load by over 300%.
When analysing why this happened at the Cool Publications monthly traffic stats meeting it became apparent that while in the past we'd relied on valuable word-of-mouth publicity to spread through the digital equivalent of more traditional means (i. e. fire-up your email and send off a message much as you would have picked up the phone when you found a spare moment and talked to your friends about what you'd found), in this case we'd actually 'prompted' the surfer to tell their friends and, what's more, made it possible for this to happen without ever leaving the page.
"Breaking the flow of concentration of surfers is never a desirable thing to do and neither should you take them off your website in order to have them send a message to a friend. The same one-click ease of use that got them there can conspire to take them somewhere else," says Lead Designer, Paul Beardsell at PQL. "Taking advantage of word-of-mouth publicity is essential to your business but it should never happen at the expense of a sale."
So, if you have a page on your website (or a product) which you think it'd set the world alight and surfers would like to share with their friends, go ahead and implement the code to make this possible. As long as you remember that empowerment also means ease of use and additional sales, and all this should work, seamlessly together.
David Amerland is the Projects Editor at Cool Publications, an internet publishing company that has revolutionised web marketing and publicity. Prior to that he reported for The European, worked in PR for a national sports corporation and was the lead reporter for Your Money, Savings and Investments magazine.
Ashton group transportation logistics management ..Google is the most popular and most used search engine... Read More
An important question to answer when creating or revising a... Read More
Everybody Loves A Freebie!It's true! Who doesn't like to get... Read More
Here are 5 questions to flex your mental muscle to.... Read More
Repetition is the key to getting your adverts and promotion... Read More
Here are the website promotion tactics to reinforce and increase... Read More
Website promotion is a vital area in internet marketing that... Read More
Every web business should be using testimonials. Testimonials are extremely... Read More
Viral marketing can work wonders for any business, web site... Read More
When I first began attempting to make money on the... Read More
The first step to starting a profitable online business of... Read More
Think about it, when you browse any web site, you... Read More
Your success on the internet is directly related to how... Read More
Hardly a day goes by that I don't get an... Read More
It's no big secret that banner ads have become less... Read More
You have invested your time and money into putting up... Read More
One of the best ways to promote a Website inexpensively... Read More
How to get your business exposed for free!Everybody in the... Read More
With learning about online promotion, there is so much information... Read More
How to market your business? It needs your continual effort.... Read More
Recently one of my students asked a great question: We... Read More
With all the "How To" articles, and great advice available... Read More
I created my first website in 1995 - it was... Read More
Would it surprise you to know that Compaq Computer? outsources?... Read More
(but also one of the most crucial part)It is time... Read More
group transportation logistics management Highland ..With all the "How To" articles, and great advice available... Read More
Promoting your website might seem like an enormous task that... Read More
Stop wasting your time and having your energy sucked dry!... Read More
Writing articles for submission and distribution on the internet is... Read More
I think you all know that buying pop ups in... Read More
It's no big secret that banner ads have become less... Read More
If you are a local business that gets most of... Read More
Though it's wonderful to get all those hits to your... Read More
Website promotion is no longer easy to do.But if you... Read More
Quickly making money with a website is the dream of... Read More
Viral Marketing is allowing people to giveaway and use your... Read More
Google Sitemaps is a simple and fast way for your... Read More
Your success on the internet is directly related to how... Read More
Ok, now if you've started reading this article thinking that... Read More
Do you want to achieve extra-ordinary success in your online... Read More
You have permission to publish this article electronically or... Read More
Market my website? Why should I have to spend time... Read More
I've collected some really cool free products for you that... Read More
Promotion... also known as selling. Not an easy task in... Read More
Promoting a Website is not an easy task. New Website... Read More
1. Use reward programs to keep people revisiting your web... Read More
It's a fact. While most link partners are scrupulously honest... Read More
Do you want to advertise about your website?Wait and have... Read More
Every web business should be using testimonials. Testimonials are extremely... Read More
Link Value is the perceived value another site will derive... Read More
Web Site Promotion |