Can people move around your site and get the information they need? Or do they get lost and leave as quickly as they arrived?

Everyone knows they need a navigation bar on their web site. They know it forms a structure that allows visitors to move around the site and find that important piece of information they’ve been looking for. But what many people don’t know is that a lot of visitors may be getting lost on their site. The links are not clearly identified, are somewhat hidden, or simply don’t go where the visitor wants to go!

So how do you go about keeping visitors on your site? How can you be assured they are finding the information they need? When do you start to think about your site’s navigation - which comes first - design or the site’s navigation structure?

A common misconception about the website design process is that the starting point for any web project is how the site will look. What colors are going to be used, what typography will be used, what photos and illustrations will be used etc. But any experienced designer will tell you — it’s not.

The real starting point in the overall design process is outlining how visitors are going to move through your website.

The way information is presented, especially in larger sites, must be carefully planned. Anyone coming to your site from a link found in a search engine, a link a friend sent in an email, or a link found in a trade directory must understand where they land on your site and how they can move easily from that point.

We designers who approach design projects from the perspective of the visitor will work with you to help determine your primary navigation’s links and categories. From there, you can determine your secondary navigation’s links and subcategories. Keep your navigation simple and make all information accessible within one or two clicks. This helps ensure that visitors find information quickly without getting frustrated and deciding to search elsewhere for information or products.

Does all web navigation have to look the same?

Another misconception is that all navigation links must be positioned on the left hand side of the web page and no where else.

The real rule is that all navigation must be obvious - all primary navigation must be easy to locate. That doesn’t mean it must be on the left hand side and it must be in 12 point Arial, it must be underlined, and it must be blue.

Your site navigation must be highly visible and accessible. It should not be hidden in confusing graphics or appear in different places on different pages. You want visitors to find information quickly and clicking through as many pages as possible because they are finding the information they need – not lost and looking for a way out!

Linking within your content is also highly recommended and should be utilized not only for visitors but for search engine web crawlers as well. Nevertheless, you need to use these links with care and help visitors find answers to the questions they came to your site asking. Don’t randomly link from the body of your text; use discipline in your selections so you are sure users will know where they are, how they got there, and how to get back to where they were.

Can your site navigation benefit from a web designer’s point of view?

One final misconception is that only sales managers or marketing personnel are able to outline your website’s navigation because they know the product/service and how to best present the information.

From the perspective of your overall business, this is true. Your sales and marketing teams are saturated in your company philosophy, products/services; they live and breath it day in and day out. However, this may work against them when it comes to designing your site’s navigation. They may have a tendency to organize information the way they understand it, not the way customers need to learn it.

An experienced designer can help you understand how visitors will move through your site by offering a “fresh” perspective. From the outside looking in, designers can look at all the information you need to present. They can work with you to be sure that the information people are looking for on your site is well represented and presented in your website’s navigational structure.

Does all this time spent on navigation pay off?

In closing, creating your website’s navigation is the most important first step in the overall design of your site. The process of establishing primary and secondary categories and subcategories can be difficult and time consuming, it can be directly related to the amount of time visitors spend on your site. Once the navigation is set up, then its time to play…I mean work… with your designer on color, typography and don’t forget the amazing pictures that will truly let visitors know who you are!

Traditional Media is So Last Season

Alternative media is any media falling outside the mainstreams of corporate communication. Traditional media like television, newspapers, magazines, and radio will always be classic styles. However, many forward-thinking marketers know that alternative media is not just the latest fad in marketing and is beginning to supersede these classic styles.

Many businesses are moving their advertising dollars to alternative media like online and interactive media to support or even replace their traditional media campaigns. A recent study found that by 2010 internet advertising spending is expected to grow from $8 billion in 2005 to over $25 billion. As businesses increase their spending on alternative media, their investment and conviction in traditional media continues to flatten.

So your business spent thousands of dollars on a television campaign to spark a potential customers’ interest. As many customers rely heavily on a business’s website for additional product information, they decide to research your business online.

But, what if you don’t have a quality website?

A quality website gives your business more credibility in the mind of a consumer, and a lack of quality could be a serious marketing faux pas. The key is to utilize the right balance between traditional and alternative media to optimize your investment.

Accessorize Your Return on Investment (ROI) - Much More Than a Website

If you only have a website, you are missing out on other great online marketing opportunities, such as e-mail marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and social media that can increase your business’s ROI.

An e-mail campaign based on your customer database can save you all the direct mailing costs of a print publication and allows more money to reach the bottom line. Print publications are very time-consuming and incur higher staffing costs, while online publications are much simpler and can be automated. Online publications have no time or space restraints, and can easily be written, edited, and launched in a matter of hours- not days.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can lead potential customers directly to your website from search engines – no traditional advertising required. Generating organic customer leads directly from the web is priceless when approximately 78-84% of all web traffic is coming from search engines and 41% of online browsers rely heavily on search engine results in their decision making process. The fact is that many people are using search engines to perform preliminary research for learning about a company, specific products, or even certain people. It’s important to make sure your site is organically optimized and browsers can find your site and increase your exposure. The top three search engine results get 60% of web searchers to click them and that means more business for sites that are organically optimized.

Social media has become increasingly popular and is another great outlet to get people talking about your business and increasing your exposure. Social media includes social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, writing blogs (just like this one), and video and picture sharing through sites like Flickr and YouTube.

Going Green is the New Black

The shift from traditional media to alternative media is also helping the environment. Advertising online instead of in the newspapers or magazines and sending e-newsletters instead of direct mail newsletters –everyone is going green. It is our business’s social obligation to create a sustainable future. By cutting the need for paper and printing, you save money, reach a wider audience, gain access to larger possibilities for advertising, and increase convenience and flexibility, all while eliminating a huge source of waste and drastically reducing the amount of natural resources your publication uses.

You can even get solar-powered hosting for your site, where solar panels are used to generate electricity to power offices, the data center, and the server as well. Some companies also use solar tubes to bring in natural lighting during the day. According to BP Solar, the use of this solar panel system eliminates 19,890 lbs. of Carbon Dioxide, 5.9 lbs. of Nitrous Oxide, and 0.45 lbs of Sulfer Dioxide per year.

Don’t wait for the competition to beat you to the punch and take advantage of these alternative media strategies, increase your ROI, and go green before they do. Be a trendsetter, not a follower.

Email Marketing can walk a fine line between great advertising and villainous SPAM or worthless BACN. You’re sending out advertising emails to all your existing customers and/or leads trying to get them to come to your site and buy something – simple marketing basics. However, if your email recipients find your emails annoying, pointless, or even detrimental, you have entered the Email Marketing pork industry:

BACN - Subscribed emails that are unread by the recipient for a long period of time, if at all. Email you want, but not right now.

It’s all about how your email recipients view your emails. If your business’s Email Marketing is viewed as villainous or dull, your emails are SPAM and BACN. At this point, your Email Marketing is hurting you more than helping you. Assuming you are only emailing subscribers, here are some tips to get the most out of your Email Marketing. Remember, keep it legitimate and wanted:

Avoid being SPAM

Promise your subscribers that their email will never be given/sold to anyone. Of course, someone proving that their email has been sold is rather difficult. However, if all your email recipients begin receiving emails about FREE CANADIAN Rx!, they may put up tough email blocking systems or even change their email (doubtful they’ll sign up for yours or anybody else’s emails again).

Overkill. I signed up to receive emails from a few different computer parts retailers because they have some great deals. However, they all send marketing emails every single day. Even if I am interested, I don’t have the budget for a $200 a day hard drive habit. Needless to say, I unsubscribed from them, only to find most of them didn’t unsubscribe me (apparently there was no way to do so). So I blocked them – they cluttered my inbox, didn’t provide me with anything, and proved they are not trustworthy in their marketing practices. If any email recipient says this about your emails, you have become the villain. So limit your marketing to once a week or once a month. Make sure you have something to offer (discussed more in BACN). Have your Email Marketing apply to customers’ needs and don’t try to scattershot with everything your business has to offer.

Knock knock. Who’s there? Name a spammer. Go ahead………you can’t can you? Unless they are using a false front (or attaching to a successful company’s name), you will never see a company name in the email subject from spammers. You need to let your customers know that it’s your email in their inbox. When you knock on someone’s door and they say “who is it?” you don’t reply “Get your ONLINE DIPLOMA FREE with GREAT MORGTAGE RATES and HOT XXX ACTION!” - no, of course not. In the subject, let them know it’s you and what you are offering - Subject: Daly Communications Group LLC, New Email Marketing Tips.

Wave goodbye – quickly! I mentioned before about not being able to unsubscribe from some email subscriptions; this is the truest sign that a spammer is at the other end of the email. I just proved to them I’m receiving their emails so they pounced on the opportunity. Another instance where I unsubscribed from an email subscription - the business sending them wanted me to fill out pages about why I was unsubscribing (which is their problem, not mine). The simplest answer for unsubscriptions is to say goodbye and have that be the end of it. However, if you offer something to them on their way out it’s a second chance without asking anything of them. Offer a concession, it can only do good as they are already “annoyed” and you are trying to help the situation.

Professional expectations. The craziest spam I get ranges from one sentence with a link about fake watches in broken English to nothing but graphics pasted together to form an amateur pornographic puzzle. The same way a recipient knows it’s your business’s email from the subject line, they should be used to how your emails are set up: news items here, on sale items here, clearance items here, link to you business’s site here. If these areas are installed with fresh content regularly, you’ve really opened up a chain store through email. People know where products are in the store, but don’t know exactly what’s new and interesting in those sections.

Avoid being BACN

Dear, <insert name here>. It is important that your recipients know you are a business, but it’s even more important that you personalize your emails to each customer as much as possible. When I get an email from a business and my name is used (spelled correctly mind you) and possibly mention my geographical region, I find it carries a bit more weight than something that looks like an ad in a nationwide magazine. The technologies available for Email Marketing make personalization relatively simple. A few extra steps in your Email Marketing can make you look a personal friend to your email recipients or skipping those steps can make you a faceless corporate machine.

Exciting because you can! Boring because you cannot. If you are sending out Email Marketing just because you can, you are sending it for the wrong reason. You need to have something to offer your recipients. This may be difficult at times as nothing might have changed in a week at your business. Nevertheless, you can get creative, pace yourself, and separate the exciting from the humdrum. If you have different sections in your email, sometimes it’s best to apply your most exciting deal or info to only one section and save another exciting bit until your next email. Spread the excitement out if you need to as this keeps people checking your business’s emails. If a serialized TV show had everything exciting happen in the pilot episode, it would have no viewers left by the season finale.

SWAG: Stuff We All Get. Free stuff and contests in Email Marketing should be handled very carefully. Most spammers use this and if recipients see it from you, they can become wary of you emails. However, if you follow a few easy rules, it could get recipients clicking through to your site quicker than ever:

• Free stuff comes at a price. Recipients should have to offer up something to get some something back. I know it’s a contradiction, but it’s the reason any business offers free stuff.
• Never ask for more contact information, like phone numbers, in exchange for free stuff. This is a big turn off to recipients. Only ask for what they think about your business, you marketing practices, and/or their shopping needs.
• Shrink your contest’s geographical areas. If you are a nationwide company, promise winners in every state. If you are statewide, promise winners in every county. Most radio stations offer prizes like this to increase recipients’ chances. Increased chances = increased recipient involvement.
• Offer free stuff and prizes people actually want. Have them apply to your business or something presently popular. People don’t really want bumper stickers of your business, but they do want free products of services from your business. They don’t want tickets to a community theater troupe’s production of Cats, but they do want tickets to Lion King on Broadway. You should be giving you customers what you would want to win, not what you want to get rid of.

Clipping coupons. Discount coupons are something that are easier to measure and have your recipients coming to your site (or place of business to use them). You ask nothing of the customer to get these discounts and since the customer asked to be on your email list anyway, they probably planned on shopping at your business. Discounts are usually the best lure to put in a subject line. I really don’t care if a business has hired a new executive and won’t open that email, but if they offer me a coupon for 30% off my purchase of $50 or more, I might take a look at their products and see if they have anything I can’t live without.

Email Marketing – Keeping it Legitimate/Wanted

Always remember, it’s not a matter of whether your Email Marketing actually is SPAM or BACN, its all about how your recipients perceive your emails. Any marketing guru can tell you that people are fickle – they always want the best new idea or deal. Your business is on a level playing field with major marketing agencies around the world in Email Marketing. You need to be able to step up your Email Marketing content to get your customers and leads to open your emails more than an NYC marketing firm’s emails.

If you try to cheat or just throw noise out at your customers, they will drop or block you in a second, even just based on one bad email from your company. So, give your customer quality content, quality deals, and don’t give too much, too early.

And always: KEEP IT LEGITIMATE/WANTED, or you’re Email Marketing ends up as SPAM or BACN.