Fabulous Favicons

When it comes to jumpstarting your branding, it makes sense to take it top down. Since the address bar is one of the first things viewers see, having a cool little favicon next to your URL builds recognition and shows surfers you know what’s up. If people bookmark your site, every time they scroll down their list of bookmarks, or favorites, they see your favicon, or “favorites icon,” once again. This gives you exposure and ingrains your branding, even before people go to your site. Plus, when viewers go overboard in using tabs and space is limited, a favicon will label your page’s tab when all the words get kicked out into oblivion.

Google has the ‘G.’ Craigslist has the peace sign. Gmail has the ‘M’ over a piece of mail. How will you make your mark?

A lot of popular sites will use the first or most prominent letter of their names in their icons, as in the two examples above. Sites like Microsoft, Wikipedia, Facebook, WordPress, and WordTracker all do this. Others, like Yahoo and Bed Bath and Beyond do that too, but mix it up a bit with an exclamation mark after the ‘Y’ and making ‘B’ to the third power.

Others stick to their main logos, like Starbucks. However, these can be hard to read if your logo is complicated, which really defeats the purpose of branding anyway. Perhaps that is why so many companies choose logos representing letters in the first place, like McDonald’s easily-recognizable golden arches. Companies with short names like eBay can also get away with using their regular logos.

Others choose some kind of symbol that marks their personality or movement, whether it is incorporated in the main logo or not. Examples are Craigslist’s peace sign, the White House’s patriotic eagle, Digg’s networking diagram, and Doba’s simple green dot.

Auto Responder Placement—Squeeze Pages are Lame

For those of you still on the squeeze page bandwagon, they aren’t necessarily the best places to put your auto responders, as people haven’t had a chance yet to see what your site is all about.  A lot of visitors will be very careful about giving out personal information unless they’ve seen the quality of your site and are interested in something more you have to offer (a free guide, an ebook, a newsletter, etc.)  So, having a squeeze page can actually drive people away from your site altogether by encouraging them to go back to the search engines where they think they’ll find a page with more readily-available info.

You can put a link to your auto-responder (with a draw, like “click here for your free guide to . . . .”) on every related page of your site in the side bar, or in a place next to good information that would lead people to want even more from you.  To put an auto-responder on your site, look through the help section for your builder.  Add hidden download page you can provide links for in your emails to people who sign up.  That way, a visitor would sign up for the e-book, and he/she would immediately get an email with a link to download the e-book for free.

If you’re concerned about protecting the e-book you send out, look at www.copyright.gov for more info on copyrights.

Placement, Heat Maps, & CrazyEgg

If you’re of the opinion that the placement of various elements on your pages work themselves out naturally, there is more to the art of layout that needs discovering!

If you were a starving cross-country road tripper pulling off the freeway to get something to eat, most likely you’d choose one of the closest fast-food restaurants right off the exit. For that reason, those lots on by the freeway exit are probably much more expensive than land a few miles into the countryside.

Just as a realtor would notice the value difference for land lots, you should consider the space on your website to be very unequal.

Tools like heat maps visually track mouse movements so you can instantly see where on the page viewers are most prone to click. Crazy Egg has devised some really nifty innovations that track related indicators to help webmasters use their page “real estate” wisely.

Here’s also a great basic little map created by Google that shows general trends of places on pages that the eye goes to first. It’s crucial that you use the prime space with warm colors to specifically and succinctly have your purpose noticed.

Some areas of a site are noticed, and some aren’t. Marketing is all about being noticed. Therefore, it’s essential to take a step back and ask, “What is the purpose of this page?” If you know your purpose, it’s easier to make it a priority.

When dealing with purpose, there are three main steps:

1. Identify.
2. Prioritize.
3. Place.

To use your most valuable space on your website for the most important parts of your cause, consider what exactly you want to have happen. Do you want viewers to buy something? Do you want them to sign up for an auto-responder so you have their contact info? Do you want to draw emotional support for your cause? Or do you want to highlight a few products on your home page to link customers to other areas of your site, etc? Do you want to come across as looking professional?

Then, decide what the most important elements are and organize accordingly!

Sure, if you saw a sign or some kind of promising indication that your favorite restaurant was only a mile down the road, the extra time spent might be worth satisfying your hunger appropriately, but that’s a big ‘might’ in the face of immediate gratification. Web surfers need that same instant gratification, so if you want them to notice it—make it instantly available!