Online Marketing Stuff – Diary of a web start-up – internet marketing

Many of you will be familiar with Jakob Nielsen, usability guru. His latest alertbox has just been released and this one was of special appeal to me because not only does it detail ways in which your website design can be improved, these improvements focus on bringing real commercial value to your business. Read the latest Alertbox.

A few sites have recently gone under the knife and come up with a brand new design. One of Australia’s most popular sites NineMSN is one of the ones that has gone through a transformation recently.

I have to say I’m quite a fan of NineMSN’s new look. They have found a way to make the site easy to take in at a first glance, which is a big ask for any site with as much content as NineMSN. In particular I’m a fan of the “Guide” area on the right of the homepage which can be personalised by region and provides quick links to some valuable information. It’s not dissimilar from Yahoo7’s dynamic area in the same space on their homepage. Of course the proof of any site redesign will be in the usability of finding deep content on the site which will be seen over time.

In the last week another site MyHome.com.au has been launched in the already competitive real estate market, this a result of a joint venture between PBL and Microsoft. I’m not as fond of the design of this site although at first glance, it seems user friendly and has some neat features (along with a couple of bugs!) It’s understood that this site will compete primarily on a price basis with large competitors realestate.com.au and domain.com.au who have been criticised in recent times for their frequent price increases. We’ll be watching the performance of MyHome in the coming months.

I used to use the analogy that building a website was like building a house – it is important to do the planning so that the end result is right. However I’ve now revised my analogy, it’s more than building a house, it’s like building a resort. Let me explain.

When you build a resort, not only do you need to think about the planning, the layout, design, materials, development and furnishings and fittings but you need to think about what happens after the building is complete. How will you tell potential guests (or investors) about your resort? How will you look after them while they are there and how will you keep in touch with them once they leave?

The same questions apply when you’re building a website. In fact, there are several elements in the whole process where similarities can be drawn. Not only does the time and effort need to be spent to plan your website, decide what its going to look like, what people can do while they are there and how you will service them, but you also need a dedicated plan in place to get people there in the first case and to keep them coming back.

There are a whole range of tactics available online to achieve this and quite a few opportunities for thinking outside of the box. It’s important to realise that like anything, this doesn’t all happen overnight and that costs are involved due to the increasingly commercial nature of the Internet. But there are plenty of examples out there of companies doing it well. I’ll be bringing you some of those in future articles.