Business Learning Center

Blue Fountain Media grew to become one of the leading website design and online marketing companies in the country by striving to learn exactly what kinds of websites succeed and which sites are doomed to fail.

Because the web is constantly evolving, Blue Fountain Media makes a point of staying on top of industry trends. We are constantly surfing the web to find sites with interesting content that are well designed and are structured in a way to optimize business.

As you may guess, most sites fail when it comes to delivering the company’s key messages. In this installment of the Business Learning Center, I will present several sites that do a terrific job of serving the core business needs of the site owner.

I know I’ve discussed this in earlier editions of the Business Learning Center, but I can’t emphasize enough the four key elements of a great business website:

• Proper messaging.
• Effective calls to action.
• Stickiness (features that keep bringing people back to your site).
• Viral marketing (features that encourage visitors to refer your site or specific elements of your site to others).

I will review these elements briefly. We can then look at a few specific sites that employ these elements effectively.

Messaging

People come to your site because they have a specific need and are looking for ways to satisfy that need. If you are fortunate enough to have driven a visitor to your site for the first time, you have only three seconds to convince them to stay.

Because you only have a few seconds to hook your visitors, it is critical that you have clear messaging. You must convey your message in as few words as possible. Follow your core message with specific supporting information (best presented in bullet points). If you bombard your visitor with dense paragraphs of content- right off the bat- you will lose them forever.

Always keep in mind that your website faces constant competition from other sites. When I say “Three seconds,” I mean it! When a person comes to your site, the likelihood is that they will have several other browsers open at the same time.

How do you set your website apart from the competition?

The site that stands out will be the one with the messaging that jumps out at you. It is the one that says, “Here it is! Here is the product/service you’ve been looking for!”

As you will see in the examples below, bold, clear messaging grabs their attention and follow-up information (detailed) is best presented with brief, bullet-points.

Calls to Action

Calls to action give visitors the opportunity to quickly find the specific products or services you are offering. It makes no sense to have a great business with great products or services only to have your website fail to channel your visitors quickly to your offerings. Calls to action on sites take many forms:

• Request a quote
• Buy now!
• Subscribe here
• Free trial
• Start now!

Stickiness

How do you turn a first-time visitor into a loyal repeat visitor? Stickiness.

“Stickiness” refers to the features that make visitors want to keep coming back to your site. This is critical to establishing, maintaining and growing brand loyalty. Such features include:

• Fresh content: updated on a regular basis.
• A resource center: one that provides the kind of information your visitors are looking for.
• Tips: short, sweet bites of information that are readily usable by the visitor.
• Ask the expert: provide the means for visitors to get access to the experts in your company
• User-generated content: This was the mother of Web 2.0, giving people the ability to interact with you and each other on your site.
  • Forums
  • Guest blogs
  • Photo posting
• Multi-media offerings: video, music and photo gallery

I’m not saying that every site has to have all of these “stickiness” elements. I’m just saying that you need sufficient stickiness to ensure customer loyalty.

Viral Marketing

If you have a great product or service or if you have great content on your site, you want to give people the opportunity to share information from your site with others. This is a great way to get new and targeted traffic to your site.

There are a number of ways to accomplish this:

• Forward and article to a friend
• RSS Feeds
• Twitter updates (Tweets)
• Blog subscriptions
• Newsletter subscriptions

Just a few quick points about newsletters. Don’t just toot your own horn. Make sure that the newsletter provides some advantageous information. Also make sure a third-party sends out your newsletter, one with clearances for bulk mailings. We work closely with Constant Contact, a firm that has a real understanding of e-mail marketing and the laws that govern it.

CASE STUDY: BANTAMLIVE.COM

This site really caught my eye because it does so many things well.
Take a good look at the home page and see how they’ve incorporated virtually all of the key elements discussed above:

• Big Fonts: makes the content accessible and easy to read
• Excellent layout and spacing: it doesn’t bombard you with too much information at once. No dense paragraphs.
• Clear messaging: You know what the site is all about in a second: SOCIAL CRM WORKSPACE For Sales and Biz Dev Teams. This tells the whole story.
• Bullet-points: Excellent use of checks and bullet-points to clearly present key elements of their products
• Calls to action: There are clear calls of action from the top of the home page down to the bottom: 30-DAY FREE TRIAL, SIGN UP FOR FREE (twice)
• Stickiness elements:
  • New York Tech Meetup
  • Watch our Commercial
  • Twitter Feed
  • “Buzz”

Never underestimate the power of creative and clever copywriting. Notice how they use the headline “Buzz” for their recent press. This is far more creative than the typical “In the News” header.  Same can be said for site with “About Us” sections. I like it when sites get creative here with offerings like “Meet the Team,” “A Peek Behind the Curtain.”

Overall, this is the kind of site geared to enhance the company’s bottom line.

CASE STUDY: QWANZ.COM

We really enjoy working with this client. They came up with an idea for an interactive site based on creating and answering polls and we built it. As you can see, it is filled with classic web 2.0 features.

Looking at this website, you instantly know what it’s all about: “Create a Poll, Get the world to vote on it, Send the Results to decision makers.

A polling site invites repeat visitors by involving them in the creation of content and by having each visitor get involved with polls created by other Qwanz subscribers.

This keeps the content fresh and constantly updated.

As you can see, the calls to action are clear and compelling: Create a Poll, Sign up, Log In, View Demo.

The site also features the most popular polls, featured polls and most commented polls. This creates a competitive atmosphere, encouraging visitors to keep coming back to see where their polls stand in the eyes of the other visitors.

Furthermore, the homepage contains a compelling “How to” video, which serves to get first-time visitors immediately involved with the Qwanz community.

CASE STUDY: FOURSQUARE.COM

Foursquare.com is one of the fasting growing websites in the world and there’s good reason for it. They have created a site that not only encourages repeat visits, they demand it!

Foursquare.com encourages visitors to “check in” from whatever location they may be. So, if you are at the Dunkin’ Donuts on Park Avenue and 16^th Street, you go on to foursquare.com, log your location and it is forever recorded.

Foursquare gives you the opportunity to be the mayor of a given location simply by checking in from that spot more often than any other foursquare visitor. This creates enormous competition, which turns into enormous traffic for the site.

The messaging on the site is simple and clear: Check in, Find Your Friends, Unlock Your City, Join Now!

CASE STUDY: DEPECHE MODE

Depeche Mode is a rock band out of England that has been around forever and their site does a nice job of providing up to the minute information for their fans.

The home page is a great example of simplicity. It features a regularly updated photograph of the band on stage. The navigation is simple and clear. The “News Flash,” “Today in DM History,” and “DM Twitter Fan Feed” are well-presented and provide easy and quick access to the pertinent information.

The Tour Tracker feature provides great stickiness. It provides visitors with the opportunity to post pictures from Depeche Mode concerts and to share their experiences with other fans. Click on the city where you attended and you can easily upload your photos.

With the thousands of pictures shown in the “Fan Gallery” you can see that this stickiness feature has been a great success.

Other stickiness features include a forum (message board) and a sign-up for e-mail updates. The Forum has well over 600,000 postings.

It is clear that Depeche Mode not only understands music, but it gets the business of music as well.

In Conclusion

It is a pleasure to share these sites with you. With so many terrible websites out there, it is nice to see that there are some businesses that truly understand how to use the web to enhance their brands and their sales.

At Blue Fountain Media, we never forget the four keys to online success:

• Proper messaging.
• Effective calls to action.
• Stickiness
• Viral marketing

If you are not happy with your current online presence, please give us a call at 212.260.1978 and see what we can do for you and your business.