Preparing Your Site For 2011

With the new year here, it is about time you make sure your website is up to par with all the trends 2011 brings. Make 2011 the year of giving your customers exactly what they want. If possible, send out a customer satisfaction survey. This way you will know exactly what you customers are looking for and how to please them. Until you are able to find out exactly what they want, here is our list of what you should be doing to keep business booming in 2011.

Continue with the social media. Social media may just more than a trend. Its been around for quite some time now and does not seem to be going anywhere. In fact, social media appears to be reaching a larger crowd then ever. Social media has branched out long beyond your college scene is no reaching a younger and older crowd than ever before. Virtually any product or service can be marketed through the use of social media.

Use mobile marketing. With the Android, iPhone, iPad and a zillion other smart phones, mobile marketing can be just about anything you want it to be. You can use mobile marketing to allow individuals to know what is going on with your business. Sales, deals and promotions can easily be known through mobile marketing via an application, the mobile web or through a text message. Additionally, give mobile shopping a try. Individuals can shop anywhere at anytime, convenience is a major factor for consumers.

Integrate multi-media viewing into your projects. Allow customers to pan, zoom and view all angles of a product from their home computer or mobile device. Provide customers with a life-like experience without having to ever step foot in a brick and mortar establishment.

Develop your content. Refine your content to meet the demands of your consumers. Avoid long, drawn out paragraphs of text. Keep it simple and get your point across. Do not just stop at text, pictures, videos, audio and pod casts can play an integral role in the success of your website. Additionally, make it SEO friendly. You want your page to show up at the top of a search engine results page.

While these may be some of the things everyone else is doing. They work! Be creative and make these ideas your own. Standing out in the crowd is the best way to get noticed and see success as a business.

What is Rich Media?

Rich media is a term that is synonymous with interactive media. Interactive media generally refers to products or services that are found on digital computer-based system, which responses to the actions of users by presenting content such as text, animation, graphics, audio, video, etc.

Rich media is a welcome change from the older, more mainstream media solutions. By using rich media, companies can create one of a kind ways to draw consumers in. Rich media can be used online or even through mobile devices.

Rich media can be a streaming video with a scene from a movie or television show, an imaged mouse cursor, a bannered ad that captures the user’s filled-in person information, ads that change when a user scrolls over them. Simply put, rich media is a means of interacting with the user. The possibilities for interaction are endless. Companies have more creative freedom and the power to make their advertisements pop out to the user.

Rich media advertisements drive and measure the engagement of their users. Rich media can send a targeted message to specific users paged on demographics and other online habits. By using rich media, companies are able to decide what works and does not work as an advertising or marketing method.

Rich Media can include:

• High quality images.
• Multiple streaming videos.
• Videos recorded from a webcam or smartphone.
• The use of Twitter.
• Using Facebook to post images and video.
• Information collection from the user.

Rich media platforms (such as offered by Preface Media) can:

• Improve the overall online of experience of customers.
• Aid in boosting sales.
• Provide a defined company image.

Rich media is a powerful advertising tool. Companies, large and small, should not be afraid to explore their rich media options. Rich media is effective, creative, engaging, and the results can easily be measured.

Need help creating a rich media campaign? Contact Preface Media. Let Preface Media create your rich media solution.

Testing Rich Media

Testing your rich media site is a great way to gain invaluable feedback and insights into what potential consumers want. What better way to test the functionality of your rich media than allowing actual consumers to access the beta version of your site?

By allowing actual consumers to test the beta version of your rich media site, feedback and insights are 100% accurate. Additionally, using actual or potential customers to test of the functionality of a rich media pages costs a company nothing.

A great way to get customers involved in testing a beta site is to use social media. Twitter followers and Facebook fans make for great test markets. Social media is free and will provide you with a large number of individuals from diverse backgrounds to partake in your test. Keep in mind that just because someone is your friend or follower on a social media site, it does not mean that they have actually used your products before. This is also a great way to get potential customers interested in purchasing from you. Place a link on your social media page to your beta site. This will direct fans and followers to take a look at the beta site. Encourage users to post comments about your rich media beta site. Ask them what they like, what they don’t like, and what they feel could be approved upon.

Here’s one example. Javis Davis offered Facebook users the opportunity to test their beta site. By providing users with a secret and important duty of testing their beta site, Javis Davis got quit the response. This small Alabama bedding store had fans engaged and excited to be participating. Javis Davis treated fans to a preview of it’s new collection and allowed them to use a design configurator to experiment with different fabrics and styles.

Testing rich media sites using social media is an effective and affordable means of getting the job done. Don’t have a rich media page? Visit Preface Media’s Rich Media Solutions.