maine web development, web design, internet marketing

photo credit: Express Monorail

After graduating from college I had the opportunity to move to Orlando, Florida and work at Walt Disney World Resorts as part of their College Program. Shortly after being hired to work for “the mouse”, you are required to attend a top secret orientation. This is when you learn the ins and outs of the Disney culture and you truly get a sense of why Disney is one of the best brands in the world.

Now, as I think about web strategy on a daily basis, I have noticed that I apply a lot of what I learned from working at The Hollywood Studios Theme Park to the way I think about websites. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you everything I know about Disney, but I’m sure some of what I can disclose you may have never noticed before.

Here are some things that I learned while working at Disney that I have applied to web strategy.

Personalization

At Disney, cast members are told that whenever they get a chance to talk to a guest, to use their first name. You know those Mickey ears that all the kids wear while they are on their Disney vacation? Well, most parents embroider their children’s names on the back, unknowingly giving cast members an opportunity to personalize an experience for the child. “Hi Johnny, are you having a fun day today? What was your favorite ride so far?”

Personalization can go a long way, but it isn’t just about saying someone’s name, it’s about thinking about how you can reach out and create something specific to an individual or small group of people. Landing pages are a great chance to personalize an experience for your user. Offering specified content, possibly based on a keyword a person has typed into a search engine or a campaign you are running, allows you to gear certain parts of your website to specific people or groups.

Keep it Clean

Have you ever noticed that you can’t buy gum anywhere on Disney property? Do you know why? It’s because gum is messy and people tend to spit it on the ground or stick it under a table when it loses its flavor. There are also trash cans within about 25 feet of each other. It’s a joint effort in keeping the park clean; all cast members are required to learn and participate in the “Disney scoop.” This means, if there is trash on the ground you are to walk past it and discreetly bend down and pick it up. Guests don’t tend to notice how clean the park is, but you also don’t hear any complaints about how much trash is on the ground either. The same goes with websites, users may not ever leave your site saying, “That was a clean, glitch-free site” but they will notice poor site design and issues they have with usability.

Flow & Navigation

With so many people traveling through the park on a daily basis, the flow of traffic is extremely important. Maps are available at multiple places on the property, signs and arrows are used to direct traffic, and the parks use information boards to inform guests about wait times as to not clog traffic. Whenever you go to a show at any Disney Theme Park a cast member will signal to you which way they want you to enter and exit.

Navigation and controlling flow is vital to usability on a website; users need to be able to easily get to the information they are seeking. Plus, if designed properly, you can do some of the directing yourself by funneling users to specific places you’d like them to visit using calls to action on your website.

photo credit: hz536n

Bus? Boat? Monorail?

At each of the theme parks there are multiple points of entry. All guests are not driving their car and parking for the day, they are coming at different times from a variety of places. These different modes of transportation throughout the park encourage guests to visit more than one park in a day. Make it easy for users to find your site by offering multiple points of entry to your website. Use links within your email newsletter, Facebook page, and Twitter tweets to lead people back to your site. Optimize your website for search engines so that users are easily led to your website to find the resources they are seeking.

“The Happiest Place on Earth”

It’s no doubt that Walt Disney World is known for being one of the best places to spend a family vacation. However, that idea didn’t happen overnight, it took years of consistently going above and beyond people’s expectations to earn that reputation. The same goes for your website, you need to consistently offer great content to your visitors packed with relevant keywords for your website. If you do that, over time, both visitors and search engines will deem your site as reputable.

A mouse’s work is never done…

Sometimes when you’re visiting Disney, you may notice that certain rides or events are “Closed for Refurbishment.” That’s because Disney understands that there is always room for improvement. Many upgrades stem from feedback and even complaints from guests.  However, Disney always takes an active approach in enhancing guest experience by assessing what works and what doesn’t work for guests and making proper adjustments. Your website shouldn’t just sit on the web to become stale, it should evolve over time. You should consistently evaluate where you are in relation to the goals you’ve set for your website and make modifications to better meet the needs of your users.

There are many other examples I can think of where I have applied what I learned at Disney to the way I think about web strategy. The most important point I can make is that Disney puts emphasis on guest experience. In all decisions made, whether it is to refurbish a ride or add a new sign, Disney does so for the best interest of the guest. That is the way your web strategy needs to be approached. Ask yourself – Does the user need this? How will it benefit them? What content will be of value to them? How can I make my website fit the needs of my clients? You may not be creating magic like Disney does, but you are creating an experience for your web users and you want to leave them with the best impression possible.

Have you checked your traffic sources on your website’s analytics lately? What do you see? It’s good to see that search has a big piece of the pie, but you also want to make sure that you have a healthy balance of direct and referral site traffic as well. A couple of days ago, Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz, posted some advice on SEO for Startups. In the post he stressed the importance of not letting search dominate your traffic sources.

Why is web traffic diversity important?

If search engines provide an extremely high percent of traffic to your site and you are not getting traffic from other sources, it tells you that people are not finding value out of your website. A valued website will have a variety of referring site traffic from sharing links, blog posts, upcoming events, news, etc. Analytics would also show a sliver of direct traffic pie from people who have bookmarked the website or typed the URL into the address bar. Referring site and direct traffic sources show that people are connecting to a site because it offers useful content.

Photo credit: net_efekt

What can you do to diversify your web traffic?

• Provide valuable content on your website, like a blog, and keep your site up-to-date with news and events.
• Use social media like Facebook and Twitter to share links to the content on your site.
• Include links to your website on your press releases and traditional marketing pieces like direct mailers and posters.
• Use links to your web content within your email marketing newsletter that your subscribers will find useful.

Value is the key to successfully diversifying your web traffic. The content on your site needs to be of value to people or else they simply will not read it nor will they share it. Plus, search engines like to see that a site receives varied types of traffic; it lets them know that the website offers relevant content that people find useful. What does your web traffic source pie look like?

Photo Credit: tapasparida

A couple weeks back, I blogged about the importance of engaging the visitors that come to your website and enticing them to convert; SEO is only a part of your overall web marketing strategy.  Search engine optimization gives you the opportunity to be found when someone searches for the keywords related to your business, but it can’t convince someone to sign up for your newsletter or contact you for more information.

In fact, just because you come up on the first page of a Google search, there is no guarantee that someone will click on your site to see what it’s all about.  Use the meta description tag to make a great first impression before they even see your website.

Think of it as your first conversion opportunity.

Meta Description What?

You may not be familiar with the term, but I am sure you’ve seen them a million times:

In the simplest terms, all the meta description tag does is describe what that particular web page is about.  The example above, taken from the famous celebrity gossip blog perezhilton.com, is the meta description for the homepage of his site.

On the “techie” side of things, it’s located in the header of the HTML code and looks like this:

<meta name=”Description” content=”Since 2004, Hollywood’s most hated website has been delivering the juiciest celebrity gossip. The blog is The go-to source for daily happenings in Hollywood. Written by the internet’s most notorious gossip columnist, Perez Hilton (Mario Lavandeira).”/>

Search engines often take the information in the meta description tag and display it as a snippet in the results underneath the link, so this is your chance to tell people what the page is about and that it’s worth the click.

Meta Description Basics

The meta description for each page needs to be unique.  Why?  Well, aren’t all of the pages on your site different?  Exactly.  You’ve got between 20 and 40 words to state the facts and you need to keep in mind that the search engine often doesn’t use the entire text – you can see that by looking at the Perez Hilton Google results snippet and comparing it to what’s in the code.  Use the important keywords in the beginning of the statement if possible to ensure that they appear in the results snippet.  Google will also  bold the words in the description that were used in the search query.  I searched for “celebrity gossip blog” to get to Perez Hilton’s site and Google bolded those exact words for me in the snippet.

Be Specific

Put your web copy skills to work and be concise; this isn’t the time to use industry jargon.  Think of the person who might be visiting the page – what kind of information do they need?  What are they looking for?  If you’re a florist in Boston specializing in wedding arrangements, then be sure to say just that.  When someone searches for “Boston wedding florist” and your website comes up in the results, having a description that says something like “We specialize in custom wedding arrangements in the Boston area…”, you’ve got a good start.  You’ve just reinforced to the searcher that you provide the service that they are looking for.

Whenever I do a search, I always scan the description underneath the link to see what I’m in for and whether or not I want to check that site out.  It may be a bit time consuming to have to write a meta description tag for the pages on your website, but it’s well worth the effort.  After all, it could be the deciding factor as to whether or not you get a visit.

There has been so much “buzz” about Google Buzz, and the 100 other things Google launches every week, I’ve been wondering what Bing has been up to lately.  I’ve seen various blog posts and comments from people stating they are becoming less endeared to Google due to all the new features they’ve introduced into the SERPs (such as the real time results) and that Bing may becoming a more viable option for search.  With this in mind, I found some very interesting Bing developments in its quest to steal some search market share from the almighty Google.

Bing Provides Facebook Web Search Results

Did anyone else notice that the new Facebook layout now displays the Search box at the top of every page you’re on?  Kind of like a search engine, no?  But that’s a topic for a whole different post.  For now, check out the “Web Results” for a search I did in Facebook on Google Buzz:

Yep, Bing’s search deal with Facebook allows it to power the web portion of all searches people type into the social networking site.  Plus, when you click to the next page for more web search results, the top of the page says “Find more Web Results on Bing.com“.  This could definitely result in an increased search volume for Bing if Facebook really starts emphasizing the search feature.

Bing + iPhone

It’s rumored that Apple will make Bing the default search engine on the iPhone with its next software update, replacing Google.  Apple and Google used to get along and play nice, but now they are competing in the same markets (phones, browsers, operating systems, etc).  If the deal goes through, Bing will start covering some ground in the mobile search area as well.  Obviously, it’s not going to oust Google from the top spot, but it would take a nice bite out of the search numbers if this comes to fruition.

Microsoft-Yahoo Search Deal Finalized

The news dropped in July 2009 that Yahoo will be ditching its search technology in favor of Bing’s.  What does that mean exactly?  You will still be able to go to Yahoo.com and do a search, but the results returned to you will be provided by Bing.  Essentially, Yahoo and Bing will have become one and Bing will be the #2 search engine in the game.  The two companies finally came to terms with exactly what the deal will encompass back in December.  The only thing left is an investigation by the US Department of Justice, which is mandated when two businesses strike a deal of this nature.  Microsoft and Yahoo don’t anticipate any problems with the review and are hoping to make it all official in the first quarter of this year.

I do not believe that Bing will ever be numero uno when it comes to search engines, but Microsoft is not letting any opportunities go to waste.  If Bing is the default search on the iPhone (and it’s already the default on various non-Droid Verizon phones), it could potentially start cutting similar deals (Firefox maybe?) and really start to put some heat on Google.  And why not? I think it’s nice to see some healthy competition and give searchers some different options.