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Engaging Customers with Interactive Websites

Websites should not just be useful--they should be fun and interactive too. When you hear, "interactive websites," you may be imagining a site like this:

But interactive sites can be entertaining and amusing for us grown-ups too. By using interactive websites, e-marketers can allow customers to create their own experience on the web. They become direct participants in the selling or buying of a product, the promotion of a product, or just a fun time. The following examples will show you how!

Kaboodle is an online boutique and chatroom rolled up into one. Users can pick out an outfit or upload their own pictures to share with friends and get their style advice. The site is essentially bringing the fun experience we have shopping with friends at the mall to the world of e-commerce. Personally, to me it seems a little silly, but many stylish buddies actually find it useful for those fashion emergency situations.

Hello Sour Sally! is a very popular interactive site that lets you explore Sally's animated world of frozen yogurt, rubber duckies, and cupcake-trampolines. The adventure makes you feel like Alice walking--or being carried through the sky by a balloon--through Wonderland. Sour Sally is like the main character in a video game navigating through the astonishing world of Sour Sally's brand of frozen yogurt and everything that tastes good on it. I know that this site is just as effective as it is entertaining, because I certainly have a craving for some frozen yogurt. Or maybe just a sweet tooth...

At Beatbox Academy, the visitor can hit certain keys on their keyboard to play the drums. This sort of time-killer is probably one of the leading causes of dropping productivity in the workplace, but it is definitely increasing sales for the company, which sells instructional DVDs and notebooks on the art of beatboxing.

The internet not only gives us a way to reach our target markets, but also a way to engage them. When customers enjoy spending time on a website, they are more likely to return and do business with the company, not to mention spread the word to their friend via word of mouse!

Search Engine Optimization Basics

From ozwebim.com.au

Companies are catching on that search engine optimization (SEO) is fundamental in creating an online presence. SEO allows websites to be discovered when it counts--whether that may be to make a purchase or to find information on the company and its services. Where potential customers find your website on Google and Bing search results can make or break profits. SEO can help you to make sure that your site is as high up on the results page as possible.



Essentially, SEO is the process of creating ways to increase your website’s presence in web search results, creating more traffic to the site.


So here are five SEO basics that every company should consider.

1. What are search engines are looking for?

According to Victoria Edwards, search engines look for content, performance, authority, and user experience. Content is the theme, text on the pages, and the titles and their descriptions. Performance has to do with how quickly your site loads and that it functions correctly. When it comes to authority, Edwards asks, "Does your site have good enough content to link to or do other authoritative sites use your website as a reference or cite the information that's available?"
The user experience includes the visual appeal of the site, ease of navigation, safety, and high a bounce rate.

2. What are search engines not looking for?

Edwards continues to say that keyword stuffing, purchased links, and poor user experience will not help your SEO. Keyword stuffing happens when keywords are overused, and buying links will not help in terms of SEO. Poor user experience can easily be avoided by making the website easy to navigate, not overwhelming your visitors with ads, and making it simple to find desired content. Otherwise the bounce rate of the website will only go up, up, and up!

3. What are “search-friendly” URLs?

Bianca Male explains that search-engine-friendly URLs are those that are named with clear and

obvious keywords. For example, when you see a URL such as 'www.tea.com/healthbenefits/greentea,' you can expect to find the health benefits of green tea easily. If it were to say, 'www.tea.com/5456/4534.html,' that would not be the case.

4. How do you use image descriptions?

Because the text in images cannot be searched, it is important to make descriptive word associations for your images. You can name your image and then add an "ALT" tag to include descriptions using keywords. Curtis Friedl advises adding captions to all images using descriptive text around the images.

5. Make friends!

 Richard Morochove suggests that companies ask the webmasters of respectable sites to include your link on their site. Then you can do the same for the perfect win-win situation. However, it is important to be sure that they are reputable so their bad image does not rub off onto you!





Conclusion

These five points can help any business better perform in basic SEO and build its online presence. SEO should be on the minds of all those involved in e-marketing to ensure success for their websites!

Color Theory in Website Design

We all know that colors affect us. They bring out emotions and they have their own energy. 

Color Theory observes these effects and can thus help us design and market our products effectively by tapping into the consumers’ emotions. This is especially true in website design (where I’ll be focusing on) where a lot of the “selling” in e-marketing occurs, including both e-commerce and just promoting a product! 

 According to Thomas Cannon, Color Theory is the study of “the interaction of colors in a design through complementation, contrast, and vibrancy.” 

Complementation is how colors are viewed in relationship to other colors. One way to use complementation is to use two colors that are on opposite sides of the color wheel. This forces designers to create a way to balance out the colors to we are happy to be looking at the design—not leaving us begging for an aspirin. 

Contrast is used to help cut eyestrain and keep the viewer focused. Using a light background with dark text, and vice versa, is a great example. Another thing to note is that reserving the brightest color for the text cuts eyestrain and focuses the reader’s attention the most. Using complementary colors is not exactly the Golden Rule of contrast though. If one of the colors is too bright compared the other color, eyestrain will still be an issue. Ouch. 

Vibrancy is what controls the emotion that is brought out by colors. Brighter colors bring out energy, while darker colors lead the viewer to feel relaxed. This leads us to color psychology. According to this source, here are the common emotion-to-color relations:

Brown – warmth, coziness

Black – power, sophistication

Grey - somberness, stability

Blue - trust, confidence

Red - excitement, passion

Pink - youthfulness, romance

Purple - luxury, wisdom

Orange - energetic, vibrant

Green - natural, growth

White - purity, simplicity 

Yellow - happiness, joy

Using this colors, and the emotions that come with them, we can convey a distinct image and reputation to the viewers of our websites. 

Examples 

In-N-Out Burger, like many other fast food restaurants, uses red and yellow which bring out excitement and happiness. This conveys the friendly and enthusiastic service of its associates. It also makes the customers excited to be there. 

Skype predominantly uses the color blue for its website to go along with the iconic logo. Blue represents trust, so Skype is sending the message that its communication services can be trusted and dependable. 

 Starbucks emphasizes the naturalness of its products through the use of green and the simplistic design of the website. 

Conclusion

• Using complementary colors will create a balanced color scheme
• Using contrast will focus your viewers' attention and keep their eyes happy
• High vibrancy will bring high energy
• Specific colors entice certain emotions 

With these tools in hand, every color scheme can be attractive, attention-keeping, and an effective e-marketing tool! 

How Simplicity Boosts Sales in E-Commerce

Online shoppers and window shoppers are two completely different groups. That is what I learned in researching how to design an effective e-commerce website.

Online shoppers want to see what they are looking for and nothing else. By reducing the number of products shown on one page, web companies can put more focus on a single product. This will make the shopping experience simpler for the online shopper, someone who was “willing to wait longer and spend more money if the shopping experience is simple and fast,” as described Glen Stansberry, a Web development blogger and contributor to Smashing Magazine. One company that is known for doing a great job at this is Apple. By dedicating the landing page to a single product, Apple effectively de-clutters its websites and allows the shopper to make a purchase with less clicks.

Minimalist design is one of Apple’s great assets. Its homepage only shows three things: the header navigation, one product to showcase, and some info links below the fold. What is something you won’t see on an Apple page? Irrelevant junk. There are no unrelated products or ads, useless text, or clutter.

Another effective e-commerce site is the Lush site. It also has a simple navigation header. Just below that is a large banner slideshow that shows its current news.

 Another great thing about this simple site is its use of whitespace. It looks like the products are jumping out at you and you can’t help but click!

Something else I discovered about Lush’s site while writing this is that the design changes with the change in window size. When I made the site a half-screen window, its header navigation became a drop-down by clicking the icon with the 3 bars. How convenient!

How awesome is that?!

As much as I love window shopping at Macy’s, I would hate to shop online on its website. It is the perfect example of clutter. Above the fold, we already see two promos. Under that is a slew of banners.

This is a cute image that would have been more effective above the fold.

More banners...

Still more...

Oh my goodness...

Thank God it's over.

Let’s conclude with a list to help ease the clutter by Glen Stansberry.

1.       Only show what you need to make the sale.

2.       The less clicks a shopper needs to buy, the better.

3.       Design the site to be simple enough for your grandma to use.

4.       Reduce the number of columns used to avoid cramming content into smaller spaces.

5.       Give less options to reduce the stress of the web shoppers.

With this list in hand, any e-commerce site can become both appealing and effective.

The Body Shop vs. Lush

Being a skin-care fanatic, I am always on the lookout for natural, gentle, healthy, and ethical beauty and skin-care products. Two companies that both produce top-quality products and promote ethical business standards are The Body Shop and Lush. I have chosen these two to compare in terms of their internet marketing practices. Also being a loyal Lush user myself, I will do my best to stay bias-free during this competition (but no guarantees). 

The Body Shop was founded by Anita Roddick in 1976 and is based in England. It was purchased by L'Oréal in March of 2006 for £652.3 million, or $1.1 billion. There are 2,500 stores over 61 different countries, and the brand is well-known globally for its fair trade efforts. Its mantra is, “Beauty with Heart,” and its values include fighting animal testing, supporting community fair trade, activating self esteem, defending human rights, and protecting the planet.

Lush was founded by the husband and wife team of Mark and Mo Constantine, also in the UK. The first store opened in Poole by the name of Cosmetic to Go in 1994.  In the 1970s, Mark, a herbal trichologist, was actually a supplier to Anita Roddick’s The Body Shop until she decided to make more products herself. This interesting relationship explains the similarities of the two brands, like their ethical trade standards.

Websites:

The Body Shop’s website is bright and colorful while still using natural colors. There is an easy-to-use navigation at the top linking new products, gifts, bath and body, skin care, makeup, hair, etc. I really love the grassy background they have used to create an earthy atmosphere in a virtual setting.

Lush’s website is much edgier. There is more black and white being used rather than color and the brand often uses alternative models. Alternative models are those who have unconventional looks, such as being pierced and tattooed. Also, Lush uses a greater amount of images in the website, rather than a lot of words. The home page has a scrolling slideshow of different products and how to use them.

Both websites are very easy to navigate and have a simple look with equally simple and hip font. The websites also stress the natural ingredients used in the products and their values, like fighting animal testing.

Search Engine Optimization:

The Body Shop has 4,455 inbound links according to Hubspot’s marketing grader, and 727,000,000 results on Google. Lush has 3,188 inbound links to its site for the USA, and 23,200,000 results on Google.

When it comes to search engine optimization, The Body Shop definitely takes the cake. Judging by this information, it would seem as though The Body Shop has a bigger online presence…

Social Media:

As soon as we turn our heads to social media, however, we see a different side of the story.

The Body Shop has 377,773 likes on Facebook while Lush has 608,036 likes. On Twitter, The Body Shop has 33,500 followers, but Lush has 111,000 followers. On Pinterest, The Body Shop has 5,852 followers and Lush has 23,100. On Instagram, The Body Shop has 9,165 followers compared to Lush’s 316,931. Finally, The Body Shop has 5,683 subscribers on Youtube and Lush has 13,074.

Now looking that their presence in social media, it is easy to see that Lush is more dominant here.

Marketing Grader:

According to Hubspot’s Marketing Grader, both companies scored 70 out of 100. The Body Shop has more tweets to its homepage than Lush (1,646 compared to Lush’s 938), but it can also be noted that Lush replied to 100% of its last ten tweets, while The Body Shop only replied to half. Also, Lush only took 25 minutes to reply to the tweets while The Body Shop took five hours. Lush appears to be much more active on Twitter.

The Marketing Grader advised that both companies start a blog, but Lush actually has one featured on its website. Perhaps if the Grader caught this blog, Lush’s score may have been higher than The Body Shop.

Conclusion:

Let’s summarize the scores between our two companies. They tied in the website competition, and The Body Shop won in search engine optimization. Lush was the winner in social media presence, and their Marketing Grader scores were tied although I would argue that Lush actually won that one too. Overall, I believe Lush is doing a better job online. The Body Shop, being owned by L'Oréal, is a bigger brand, but Lush is truly connecting to its customers through internet marketing.