Inter Studio

Website Designing: Dos and Don'ts

June 8th, 2012

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The field of website designing is such that you need to keep abreast of technological developments and learn new styles of designing which help you to make the page appear attractive. A web designer’s skill lies in creating a structured layout of web content which is informative as well as attractive in appearance. There are few dos and don’ts that web designers need to keep in mind in order to create catchy designs for web pages.

Website Designing Basics

The landscape of website designing has undergone a sea change, but some essential fundamentals remain as sacrosanct today as they were yesterday. Let’s take a look at them.

Emphasis on Important Features

The average netizen has a very fleeting attention span. Anchor it you must, however, if you are to have them read your web content long enough to make a buying decision. So you must have the most important information regarding your products, services, their benefits and call-to-action buttons right on the first page where they can all be taken in at one glance. This is why you never find a long ‘About Us’ on the home page of a website. That is something a curious client would get to anyway once he has formed a connection with the website and the message that is being conveyed.

Carefully Choose a Color Scheme

This is where art meets marketing. You have to understand how various colors affect people’s moods, which colors are soothing, which are disconcerting and so on. Your color scheme should complement your subject matter and suit your target audience. A site targeting kids, for instance, would be more vividly colored than a news blog and that is also the reason why social networking sites have a soothing shade of blue as a primary color.

Create a Sitemap

Now this is simply as case of putting user friendliness first. Creating a sitemap is one of the best practices to follow. This is a simple map which guides the visitors to sections they are looking, sort of like a table of contents for a thick book.

What to Avoid in Website Designing

There are some fundamental bad plays when it comes to designing web pages.

Say No to Flash Only Website Design

The first thing is that flash websites, even though they look good, can be really sluggish on slightly slower connections, and needs an external plugin that doesn’t ship with the browsers. If you ask the audience of your website to install a plugin, it acts as a repellant. It is possible to create attractive web pages even with HTML and CSS. If you must have flash, make sure to provide for a non-flash version too.

Don’t Try to Fool the Search Engines

Posting good content on websites is the only way to attain high rankings in search engines. In past few years, web masters have tried to use many unethical practices to fool the algorithms meant for page ranking. Rest assured that the people who design these algorithms are constantly watching their creations perform, and they know all the techniques used to fool these programs. Fixing those loopholes is exactly why updates are released regularly.

The points mentioned above should be given due consideration if you wish to create interesting web designs which attract visitors and keep them hooked on to the content of your website.

Building a Loyal Customer Base through Social Media

June 6th, 2012

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In order to understand social media marketing and its potentials to the fullest, we must first explore what exactly social media is, as well as its value to marketers. So let’s take a look.

Why Social Media is an Ideal Way to Reach Out to your Client Base

Social media is hard to define as a software application or any particular website as it is none of these. Simply put, a variety of tools which help us share, reach out and socialize with like-minded individuals, using the Internet as a medium, collectively make up the phenomenon that is social media.

So a working definition can be that social media is a set of web-based services which allow us to communicate with friends, interact with like-minded professionals in our field and do a lot of other tasks which, in short, help us socialize. If you look carefully at this definition, it is plain that the underlying principle behind social media is that it caters to the inherent tribal instincts of humans, which encourage a tendency to bond with groups and individuals which share interests with you.

Using the ‘tribal’ tendencies of social media to build up a customer base

The concept of of social media is however, not just limited to informal interactions. It is a tool that can be leveraged to make it big in the professional world. Marketing is one of the important applications of today’s social media where we have access to a number of tools. The social networking sites are an important tool which help in reaching out to customers quite easily. For example, a social networking site like Facebook connects us to millions of people around the world. So, what can business entities do with social media. One thing that can be done for sure is building a loyal customer base.

Beyond Advertising: Interacting Directly with the Customers Through Social Media Networks

It is observed that corporate entities spend most of their time, money and effort on traditional media channels for the purpose of advertising. The catch here is that if the same effort is used on the upcoming media channels like the social networking sites, it possible to create a far greater customer base. The biggest advantage that networking sites offer is the way you can directly interact with customers. There are forums, chat rooms and many such tools which help you in interacting with your customers. Building a loyal customer base however, requires you to take the necessary efforts to keeping in touch with people and understanding what they expect from you. Replying to queries of customers in a timely manner is one such move to build trust in the minds of customers. It is necessary to understand that the process of communication is a two-way channel where the words like ‘feedback’ and ‘response’ do count. Your social media marketing campaign should therefore, be started with such an approach. Only then can you think of building a loyal customer base through social media.

The Biggest Myths About B2B Content Marketing

April 23rd, 2012

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Content marketing is hot right now. According to the B2B Content Marketing: 2010 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends report, 51% of B2B marketers plan to increase their content marketing budgets within the next year. That’s because publishing compelling content can help you attract customers, increase your brand awareness, promote your thought leadership and bring more visitors to your website. And that’s just a short list of benefits!

However, you may have come across a few myths that are preventing you from getting the greatest ROI from your content marketing efforts. If you’re in the early stages of a content marketing strategy, you may believe at least one of the following myths.

Myth #1: If I tweet it, they will read it

Reality: It takes more than simply publishing a blog or posting a tweet to bring visitors to your website. The average lifespan of a tweet is one hour–meaning that if no one retweets you within an hour, you’ll have to either try again later or post something more compelling.

The same thing applies to the rest of your content. Only a limited number of people will subscribe to your blog or trade their contact information to download a white paper. If you want to reach a larger audience, you should make your content available in different formats on different channels. For example, you can turn a series of blog posts into a white paper or make a video of an educational presentation and share it with your social networks.

Myth #2: The number one purpose of developing content is to figure high in search engine rankings

Reality: Publishing keyword-rich content can improve your search engine rankings and bring more visitors to your website, but those visitors won’t stick around unless your content is engaging. Don’t try to get to the top of the search engines by stuffing your social media content and website with keywords. This makes your copy boring and tells your readers, “I wrote this for Google–not for you.”

Instead, write about topics that interest your readers. When readers find your content valuable, they will share it with their networks. The inbound links to your website will do more to improve your Google rankings than stuffing your copy with keywords.

Myth #3: Content marketing is a great way to sell my products and services

Reality: You have a huge opportunity to attract customers with your content. However, many marketers turn their blogs, white papers and social media messages into blatant sales pitches. If you try to pitch to potential customers before they get a chance to know, like and trust you, they will tune out. The bulk of your content should educate potential customers and help solve one of their key problems. Once your prospects view you as a trusted and helpful resource, they will be more likely to turn to you if they need your product or service.

How Facebook Timelines Changed the Face of Social Media Branding

April 12th, 2012

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When Facebook launched Timeline for brands last month, it wasn’t just marketers’ social media strategies that got turned upside down.

The new format also changed the way consumers experience brands on Facebook.

In a webcam eye-tracking study for Mashable by EyeTrackShop, participants spent less time looking at Wall posts and ads and more time looking at the cover photo on brands’ timelines than they did on their old Facebook Walls.

“The new Facebook Timeline limits the effective branding space, and the top portion of the page must be effectively utilized,” suggest the study’s authors.

EyeTrackShop recorded eye movements of 30 participants as they were shown brand profiles — before and after being converted to timeline — from the Dallas Cowboys, Good Morning America, “The Muppets” and Pepsi in 10-second intervals. What participants looked at on each webpage, for how long and in what order is recorded in the images below.

Results suggests a few ways our perception of Brands on Facebook has changed:

Ads on Facebook Timeline are less visible than ads on Facebook Brand Pages. While 30%-40% of study participants looked at ads on brand Timeline pages, 80% looked at them on Brand Pages. In both cases, ads placed higher up on the page fared better than those below them.
Cover photos are the new Facebook Wall (at least as far as attention goes). On brand pages, Wall posts were the star attraction. Viewers on average looked at them first and for the longest amount of time.

On the brand Timelines, however, viewers always looked at the cover photo first. In all but one case, they spent a longer time looking at it than at Timeline content.
Everyone will notice your cover photo. It’s larger than anything else and at the top of the page for a reason, and 100% of viewers looked at it. On average, they saw it in 0.5 seconds or less. Meanwhile, only 65% to 92% of viewers noticed profile photos on Brand Pages.
Viewers see Timeline content last. In every case, viewers looked at either the left or right column of Timeline content last — after ads, navigation buttons and brand logos.
Information that was invisible is now a focal point. Facebook moved the number of Likes, events and apps to prime top-and-center territory. It now gets more attention than when it was listed on the right-hand side of the page.

In the case of Good Morning America, for instance, the show’s 585,000 Likes went from being completely ignored on its Brand Page to being the biggest attention-getter on its Timeline.
Cover photos with faces attract the most attention. Good Morning America and “The Muppets” have cover photos with faces, whereas the Dallas Cowboys and Pepsi do not. The cover photos with faces attracted more attention.