|
|
|
|
You Can Get Anything on the Internet - Even A Big Brass Band eBayauction - The Bowie High School Marching Band At Your Next Gala! If you are from Texas with an extra $5,000 or more burning a hole in your pocket, this auction is for you. So far there is one bid for the band at $4,999 and the auction has another 8 days to go. The band located in Austin, Texas, is trying to raise money to go to the 2004 Fiesta Bowl National Band Championship and Parade. Posted by WEBnME @ 9/26/2004 10:51:00 PM 
Permanent Link: http://www.webnme.com/2004/09/you-can-get-anything-on-internet-even.asp SHARE: 
Web Disasters - Sites We Hate - Part X SERVE THE AUDIENCE Now this simple concept ought to be common sense for any organization that runs a website, but it seems to be the most difficult in practice. Websites tend to be slaves to organizational interests instead of serving their customers. State government websites can sometimes be the worst offenders. Recently I explored a number of DMV websites for various states to see whether it was easy to find out how to get a vanity license plate. What an eye opener. Try this sometime. You'll be amazed at how many states do not realize this is a customer need. What Is The Purpose of the Website? If we judge some of the sites by appearances, it seems to be to promote political agendas, brag about accomplishments, look way cool, or to simply have a site whether or not it is functional. Only a few state government sites appeared to be really customer oriented. Kudos to North Carolina for studying its customer needs and completely revamping its site to organize information by customer needs. Can Your Customer Find Information? Some of these state sites made finding information on license plates easy with a link on their home pages. More often it required some clicking around to find information. Hawaii and the District of Columbia both have beautiful websites, but I was hard pressed to find information on license plates let alone specialty or vanity plates. West Virginia has its information on specialty license plates tucked in news releases and has a pdf file with pictures. The visitor is left to piece things together without a page to explain what is available. Wyoming simply didn't have anything on what plates were available at all. Kudos to Nevada for one of the easier sites to use. Eye Candy or Real Value Kentucky's Transportation Cabinet has one of the best eye candy sites. Wow. But think about it. Flash pages with animated buttons and lots of color may look nice, but the customer may be asking where's the beef. How do I find information is the question. Fortunately their motor vehicle licensing page was much more sensible and easy to use with relevant information. Mississippi has a wonderful looking website, but I'm hard pressed to tell you which page, if any has information on license plates. They have graciously provided a site map with links to fishing licneses, hunting licenses, and driver licenses, but without any reference to license plates. The New Mexico Taxationa and Revenue Site will give you vertigo. There are separate areas of horizontal and vertical scrolling text that is non-stop. Bureaucracy or Bang for the Buck Tiny Rhode Island has the best site for navigation and ease of use. When you arrive at their DMV site, it is all about finding information and you won't find flash, bouncing text, long-winded letters from important people and pictures of elected officials. It is down to earth and all business. Way to go. Posted by WEBnME @ 9/09/2004 11:25:00 PM
Permanent Link: http://www.webnme.com/2004/09/web-disasters-sites-we-hate-part-x.asp SHARE:
Web Disasters - Sites We Hate - Part IX AVOID DISASTER - MAKE THE USER IMPORTANT 1. Personalize If at all possible, personalize the web experience of your visitors. Amazon.com has done a great job of offering of tailored buying suggestions, personalized offers, and the opportunity to share personal views on products. This helps to build customer loyalty. 2. Engage Allow visitors to engage in communication. There are lots of ways to do this. Support forums are excellent. Comment and feedback forms are great. Asking visitor opinions, if not overdone, is also good. Gmail is doing a great job of this with their mail website. Users are encouraged to make suggestions and many suggestions are adopted. Visitors are also afforded the opportunity to share the experience by recommending friends for free e-mail accounts. This open channel of communication that allows your visitors to be your best marketers is invaluable. 3. Recognize If you are selling or running auctions, take a page out of the eBay book. Sellers and buyers get recognition through a scheme of feedback points. As the user accumulates points, the users identity gains a star and with more points the stars change colors. This also works well on forums where frequent contributors are recognized for the number of posts and where other members can vote on their value. Everyone likes recognition. If you can work that into your website, you'll do much better. 4. Reward Website traffic is critical and return visits are highly sought after. But what are you doing to reward visitors that visit frequently? Is there any recognition of loyalty on your website? A simple script that places text on the page to thank a visitor for five visits ten visits, etc. can do wonders. Special offers (with real price reductions and not some hokey scheme) based on loyalty points are also a good way to encourage return visits. Posted by WEBnME @ 9/02/2004 11:42:00 PM
Permanent Link: http://www.webnme.com/2004/09/web-disasters-sites-we-hate-part-ix.asp SHARE:
| ||
|
| |||
|
