Social Media Marketing is all the Rage – Everyone is ‘doing it’, (even me) .  But, hold on there nelly…  Where are people really ‘Engaging With Brands’?

In Razorfish’s recent Liminal study, consumers rated the popular social networks near the bottom as places to engage with brands — especially if they’re over 45.

A study of UK eCommerce retailers showed only 3% of website traffic came from social networks, with search and promotional emails driving greater traffic. This is on top of study after study showing that people “Like” brand and corporate pages mainly to find out about specials, get discounts, updates, and so on. For the most part, consumers aren’t looking to chat with you. They want coupons.

When you create a Facebook page or a Twitter account, you’re asking people to come to you. You’re building a community. That’s a lot of work, and the evidence is showing that in many cases, it’s not worth it. LinkedIn Groups seem to fare a little better. That’s probably because they are (have been, anyway) a little less public and open. Moreover, LinkedIn Groups tend to be created around a topic, not a company or a person. People congregate in them because they are interested in sharing news, information, and participating in discussions about the topic. (Whether LinkedIn’s Groups are really effective for this purpose is a matter of debate.)

This is precisely why, in many cases, it makes more sense to go TO your customers, instead of asking them to come to you. How many existing Facebook pages and LinkedIn Groups are full of your customers? How many of your customers are thriving in existing hashtag communities? 93% of the Inc. 500 companies surveyed reported that bulletin and message boards were the most successful locations for engaging customers. Rather than trying to entice customers to come to you, why not go to them? It’s time for a little old-school marketing. Find out what they like about the communities they are participating in, what they want from being in that community, and then develop an offering to satisfy your customers there.

Here are a few more findings from the Liminal Study:

• Postal mail, print ads, mobile applications and real-time chat with customer service representatives are the lowest performers.
• Company websites, individual email, face-to-face interaction and traditional word-of-mouth are the highest performers.
• Twitter, email newsletters, company community sites, Facebook, and review sites are liminal. They are neither wholly   good, nor wholly bad, at delivering on the Engagement Elements and are evolving every day in terms of delivering newfeatures, and also in how companies and consumers use them.

Face-to-face interaction excels at delivering Trust and making consumers feel Valued; company websites are best at Efficiency and Consistency; transactional emails are best at delivering Relevance and giving Control to the consumer. In fact, face-to-face interaction, transactional email, and company sites perform well on most all Engagement Elements. Postal mail and print ads score poorly in all six Engagement Elements, even though, as we said earlier, all channels have the potential to deliver them, depending on a variety of factors.

People respond very well to the personal touch, don’t you?

Ok, ALL WEB PAGES should be Designed as Landing Pages.

What page isn’t a Landing Page?  NONE!    Every page on your website should be valuable and lead the reader to more value.

Design each page using the following 9 Landing Page Design Tips and you will see a dramatic rise in conversion.

	Keep it simple.
	“The more distractions you have on your pages, the faster people will leave. Who likes clutter? Design like this: Write your copy. Sleep on it. Come back, remove 50%. Sleep on it. Do it again! Look at everything on the page – remove EVERYTHING extraneous to the value proposition. Publish it.”

	Make it FAST.
	“You get 6 Seconds. That’s it! If your page takes 5 seconds to load, what are you left with? You do the math.”

	Deliver VALUE all along the path.
	“Your visitor is looking for something. Know what it is and GIVE IT TO THEM. Quickly!”

	Write Conversational
	“You are writing for a human. Talk like one. Write like one; like a friend, someone you can trust.”

	Think outside the website.
	“Remember, most of the conversation and decision about your business is done off-site. Seed the conversation – give respondents something to talk about.”

	Create Paths, Not Pages
	“Visitors should be gently guided along a short two or three-step path that lets them identify what is most relevant to the them. Build value along the path.”

	Keep content above the fold.
	“Don’t assume your respondents will scroll down and explore everything your page has to offer. 75% don’t.”

	Design for post-click.
	“Every page should be one step along a 2-3 step path that results in completed customer satisfaction. Plan a clear strategy for page and value flow.”

	Focus on the big picture.
	“Too often we get bogged down in the details, and lose sight of exactly what we’re trying to achieve and how it fits into the overall plan. A forest? There’s a forest out there? It’s not just the trees we’re wrapped up in, but the leaves — and maybe even the seeds! Write principled content that guides and makes life easier. That’s what we all want.”

Your thoughts and comments are very invited.    Do you know of other tips for Landing Page design you would like included?   Please share your thoughts below.

Are you giving your website page the 6-Second Usability and Value Test?  Your readers do!

Readers come to your site for VALUE.  If the don’t get it in 6 secs – they are gone – fast.

6-Second Web Page Usability and Value Test

The 6-Second Usability and Value Test involves showing users a single content page for 6 seconds to gather their initial impressions. Six seconds may not seem like a lot of time, but users make important judgments in the first moments they visit your page – fact is, readers decide to stay or leave in 6 seconds.

The 6-Second Usabilty and Value Test shows how and what judgements are made, giving you insight into some essential information about the page. …

We start by giving users a focused task … Next, before we show the user the page, we tell them we’ll only display it for 6 seconds. We ask them to try to remember everything they see in this short period. Once the user views the entire page for 6 seconds, we remove it by either covering it up or switching to another window. Then, we ask them to write down everything they remember about the page.

When they finish jotting down their recollections, we ask the following questions:

• What is the page’s core message?—The answers let you know whether the design framework supports the page intent.  Does is deliver the value to the reader they hoped for?
• What captures your attention? Are there elements on the page that draw your attention immediately?—The answers tell you whether these are the elements to which you want to draw customers’ attention. Do the attention-getting elements help move customers into paths that deliver even greater value to the reader?
• What do you think you can do on the page?—The answers can help ensure you optimally support the tasks on which most customers are focusing.
• What ‘value’ did you get from reading this page?  What value could you receive?
• What was the call to action?

We might test a number of different landing pages to see whether users can recognize design patterns, asking: Are there any common elements you’ve seen on the pages we’ve shown you? Once a user has had some time to look at the various designs, we document issues that we can translate into design and message improvements.

Usability and Value Walkthroughs

Usability and Value Testing can help you understand web-page designs. Let’s walk through several example home pages, thinking about answering the following questions;

• What is the site’s core message or business?
• What captures your attention?
• What do you think you can do?