If you’re like the majority of people these days, the answer is “not very.” Websites tend to be little more than extensions of typical printed collateral – but online. The few interactive elements they contain are mouse rollovers and maybe an animated tag cloud.
This is not a good thing.
If every piece of direct mail you received was plain black and white, you’d never read anything. If television commercials were scrolling text with a monotonous voiceover, you’d change the channel. Marketers have done a fantastic job leveraging the creative power of print, radio, and TV. But we’ve missed the mark so far with web design.
I’m just as guilty as the next guy, though. Look at this site, at my company’s site, and even at my clients’sites. They’re very plain, un-animated, and not interactive. This translates to low usage, limited return visits, and a low sales conversion rate. There, I threw up the magic metric. Everything is keyed to sales conversions – so what can we do to improve things?
Take a cue from successful sites like Twitter and Facebook. Facebook, in particular, makes money from a free website. Users sign up, come back for more, and pay for premium features. What do they get in return from Facebook? Next to nothing! But because the site is interactive, it’s interesting. You can control where different page elements turn up, who can see your “status,” and even what content is published.
So what can you do to a) make your site more interactive and b) leverage the power of the Internet to improve your sales ratio? The general answer is “a lot,” but I look forward to seeing some more specific suggestions, too.
