Websites and web design has changed dramatically since the 1990′s. Well, at least for most savvy marketers it has. Unfortunately for many, their website’s look as if they were set up in the 90′s and haven’t kept up with the rapid pace of change, even though they’re much, much newer than that.
Your website sucks if....
Here are a few ways you can tell if your website sucks:
Its really, really cool. In fact its so cool people don’t know what to do when they get there. The buttons are hidden. There’s lots of bells and whistles. Its probably built in Flash. This is not an effective marketing tool, its an indulgent waste of time and money.
Its forces visitors to endure some autoplay music or video or pop-up. These are just annoying and unnecessary. They’re certainly not designed with the end-user in mind.
It’s rarely found on the major search engines Google, Bing and Yahoo. If your website doesn’t turn up high in search for multiple relevant search terms, ie not just your name, then it probably not optimised correctly, if at all. You will be missing tons of valuable traffic and potential leads. This is madness in an era when most people “Google” everything they need.
The popular social networking, micro-blogging site Twitter is getting a revamp with the founders announcing the biggest overhaul of the site since it launched, and it includes a real bonus for inbound marketing.
The new Twitter has a lot of subtle improvements but probably the single biggest major improvement is the integration of videos and images in the tweet stream. By partnering with many major players such as TwitPic, Etsy, Flickr, Kiva, Photozou, Plixi, TwitVid, USTREAM, Vimeo, yfrog, and YouTube, Twitter is enabling instant display of multimedia.
This is great news for inbound marketers and content generators and it will force many marketers to start producing content or be left behind.
The launch of Google Instant promises to be extremely beneficial for inbound marketing.
Google Instant is great for inbound marketing
Google recently announced the launch of Google Instant, a new interface that uses predictive technology to allow users to search as they type. Results appear in real-time as users type in their queries, adjusting with every new word or letter.
Google claim the benefits to be:
Faster Searches: By predicting your search and showing results before you finish typing, Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.
Smarter Predictions: Even when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, predictions help guide your search. The top prediction is shown in grey text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need.
Instant Results: Start typing and results appear right before your eyes. Until now, you had to type a full search term, hit return, and hope for the right results. Now results appear instantly as you type, helping you see where you’re headed, every step of the way.
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