Does your website deter your visitors?
February 21, 2009
How much does your website affect the decision-making of your visitors?
Yesterday I was trying to decide which of two outdoor attractions to visit with my children, to break up a long car journey, and had no information available other than that on the internet.
Naturally, I compared the websites. I know I spend much of my day online, but isn’t the internet a common first port of call these days?
The website of one was smart, appealing and well designed, with large high quality graphics and a clean layout with clear navigation. It used most of the available window, and videos loaded quickly. The design was modern, with a good use of colour, and the messages to be conveyed were clear.
The second website was much less impressive: the images were poor quality and small. The layout was long and thin, only 600px wide (vs. the 980px of the first site) and seemed cramped. The promise of an interactive tour wasn’t met, as it wouldn’t work. Navigation was confusing and there was no sitemap. The site was designed 8 years ago – and it shows.
Based on the website alone, I would have gone for the first attraction: no question. In fact, we’d already visited the first, so I decided to try the second attraction. And we had a wonderful time, emerging at the end of the day happy, wind-blown and sunburnt, and muddy beyond belief.
However, that was completely unpredictable, based on the website. I was not expecting that we would have as good a time as we did – because the website didn’t match reality.
I know the British go for understatement, and are unwilling to boast – but I wonder how many more visitors the second attraction would receive if its website were more attractive?
How attractive is your website compared to its peers? Does it have the effect you’re hoping for, or is it at risk of having the opposite effect?
Kraft Foods Hides Its Brand Name Behind a Smile
February 20, 2009
Kraft Foods changed its corporate logo to, “more clearly deliver delicious,” according to a press release distributed by the company on February 17, 2009. The new logo will be the new icon of the Kraft Foods corporation, not the Kraft consumer products brand. The existing Kraft logo will still be used on cheese and all of those other Kraft products in your refrigerator.
I can understand the reasoning behind separating the brand logo from the corporate logo. In today’s economy, it makes more sense than ever to separate them! However, the new logo for Kraft Foods leaves much to be desired. First, it’s difficult to find the company name within the clutter. In fact, the company name appears like an afterthought. Read more
Outside In
February 20, 2009
So I’m on hold, waiting for a customer service representative, and since I’ve got the company’s website open in front of me, I decide to check out the Careers page. The company in question has a fairly high public profile–and since it’s in an industry where many jobs are thought of as something to do while looking for something better, there’s a fair amount of turnover. Therefore (I reason) it should be interesting to check out their recruiting strategy, as long as I’m stuck in their world for a while.
And it certainly was interesting, on many levels. In fact, I thought up seven topics for future posts in about three minutes, so this was on-hold time that really paid off. And one of the things I started wondering about was—why are people looking at a Careers site in the first place? Now that might seem like a really basic point. And everyone else may be thinking about it all the time, while I’m just way behind. Maybe not, though . . .
I was on this particular company’s site for another reason, and ended up at the Careers page through equal parts of boredom and curiosity. But other site visitors—such as potential investors, customers, or clients–might drop by Careers while trying to get a 360 view of the company. And competitors probably stop in occasionally to see what their rival is up to.
So one moral of this post is: Don’t be so focused on job-seekers that you forget about other visitors. Some of the folks who wander by for a different reason might be (or know) potentially perfect employees. Is there something on the site to catch their attention?
The other question that came to mind was “Are there any clever, creative ideas out there for getting people to the Careers site?” Preferably the right people (but let’s not rule out the volume approach). And no, I really didn’t find any. But I did end up thinking about the use of outdoor advertising for recruitment. You can’t put a lot on a billboard—but you can definitely highlight a web address. The examples shown in this post are from EMC Outdoor, and their website points out that recruitment ads which use outdoor media get attention by being different, as well as by appearing in interesting places or being seen in the same place repeatedly.
But I think there’s a subliminal message at work also. The scale of a billboard ad seems to say “This is a really big opportunity!” So the other moral of this post is: What messages are you sending indirectly on your site? Does it bring to mind exciting opportunities? Big dreams? Secure future? Or . . . ?
CDP7 : A Growth Opportunity For Corporate Websites
February 19, 2009
Statistics are one of the great lynchpins of modern society. Everything is measured as a proportion, sometimes to mask the raw figures and gives marketing men something to hang a story on.
For example, a processed food product may scream “now with 50% less added fat!” Terrific, but it represents a tiny health gain for the consumer if fat was a minor ingredient in the first place.
Then there are the statistics which flatter to deceive. My favourite is the (possibly apocryphal) public relations statement that George W. Bush came in the “top 80 percent” of his class at university. Yeeeees.
Finally there are those statistics where the figures really do show major improvement. The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) is a case in point. Read more
Silver Linings
February 18, 2009
I’ve started at least five times to write a post on the current wave of bad economic news—specifically, how lay-offs, down-sizing, store closings, and other RIFs affect recruiting. And what that means for the Careers site in particular, and online recruiting efforts in general.
But I decided every time that I should really write about something else first. Here are some of the reasons I kept veering away:
- Circumstances are changing almost daily, and it seems unlikely that trends in the employment situation can be predicted accurately.
- Problems are so big and so many that it’s difficult to analyze the various factors that might affect specific companies, or even specific industries.
- There are assorted viewpoints and theories–and it’s too soon to tell which of them (if any) will prove to accurate or helpful.
- And (of course) this is just an unhappy topic to write about . . .
So I was delighted to find a story in this category that is not only clear and simple, but also very heartening. John Zappe’s post on ere.net tells how HR consultant Mark Stelzner recently sent this message to his 700 or so Twitter followers: “Was thinking that if each of us helped just one person find a job, we could start making a dent in unemployment. You game?”
They were. And the result is Job Angels. After just a couple of weeks, this spontaneous movement not only has its own Twitter following, but also groups on Facebook and LinkedIn. A Job Angels website is under construction.
Job Angels is partly a platform to connect people who can help with people who need help–and partly a mission to create awareness and provide hope. Stelzner explains on his blog: “When faced with hundreds of thousands of job losses, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and helpless. But if the idea is for you to simply aid one person –a friend, a family member, a colleague or a complete stranger–that somehow not only seems possible, it seems probable.”
Even when recruiters and other HR professionals don’t have vacancies to fill, or they can’t hire as many people as they once did—they still have expertise and connections that can help people find work. I’ll bet a lot of people were already doing this without even thinking about it! Job Angels provides a way to capture and multiply some of that energy, through the power of social networking.
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