May 15, 2008
On June 18th, 2008, I’ll be speaking on a panel at Search Engine Strategies Toronto discussing Accessibility, Usability and SEO along with Jane Motz Hayes of WebFeat and Chris Adams from Lyris, Inc..
If you want to learn more about how accessibility and SEO cooperate (and how badly- or unwisely-performed SEO can hinder the accessibility of your website) come to Toronto in June!
September 14, 2007
And what a stupid move.
The shift for Netscape.com from an information portal to a social media site? Infinitely logical, great way to build on old traffic and renew the site for the “Web 2.0″ audience.
Building the site, making it somewhat popular, then shifting it off to an unknown domain? Not so clearly logical.
Re-branding is a common enough thing to do. Companies frequently engage in that kind of activity when their brand is suffering — either the product the sell is no longer popular, or their service isn’t really desirable, etc. Rebranding sometimes means a change in name, but more often means a refocusing of priorities. This is what Netscape did, very aggressively, when the created the Netscape.com social media portal.
Now, of course, they are shifting right back to where they were before – Netscape.com will become and editorially driven portal (sounds very familiar) which will be redirected to AOL. Yes, the Netscape.com domain will be effectively gone: netscape.aol.com just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
And might I also say that it seems incredibly foolish to announce a major change like this but not actually place any kind of information at the new Propeller.com location. Are they actively trying to avoid getting links?
It’s possible that they’re just overloaded at the moment…I guess…although this strikes me as unlikely. However, what I see when I visit Propeller.com right now is a big fat error message: server can’t be found.
I can understand not wanting to confuse the issue by launching early — but come on, people. At LEAST provide a “Coming Soon” notice.
How does AOL stay in business? Seriously.
April 18, 2007
Many companies, particularly those offering consulting services or services with a high level of abstraction do a supremely poor job of conveying to their site visitors exactly what it is that they do. Perhaps they want to appear sophisticated in their self-description, or give the impression that what they do is so complicated that only four-syllable words can effectively convey the true core of their activities.
To state it bluntly: you need to write sense in order to sell your service.
This complex brand of language does nothing for your marketing. If you write a description of what your company does which is easily understood, but not perfectly accurate, you’ll be far more successful than if you perfectly describe what you do using language which requires a PhD in semantics to comprehend! It’s not necessary to describe the nature of your business in that kind of precision — you’ll have the opportunity to explain exactly what you do further while you discuss projects with your prospective client.
I’m not suggesting that you deceive your audience, however. There’s a huge difference between imprecise descriptive text and deceptive descriptive text.
Take, for example, a company which provides, as their principle service, management of pay-per-click campaigns, but also provides consulting on a wide range of search marketing issues. It is inaccurate to say that they are a PPC management company, because this is not their SOLE occupation. It does, however, efficiently convey two things: the company’s specific specialty and the industry that they are involved with. Deception would involve making a claim about the company which was false, rather than simply incomplete.
If you want to draw somebody in to further investigate what you offer, they need to understand some level of what you offer from the beginning. When the first scan of your copy leaves them wrinkling their brows with confusion, you’ve possibly already lost the sale. If that first look tells them that you provide at least an aspect of what they’re looking for, they’re much more likely to investigate further, initiate a conversation with you to explore services, or establish a contract.
Always let somebody who doesn’t know what the company does read your copy and provide feedback. Distance from the subject is priceless — and nobody inside your company has it.