Subtitle: Productivity enhancements by text expansion.

From the very first marketing course that I ever attended (many years ago) the difference between features and benefits of any product or service has always been pushed as one of the most important thing is to understand about effective marketing copy writing. It’s a concept which is relatively easy to understand in principle. But, it is remarkably difficult to apply in practice-particularly in relation to your own service or product.

A little while ago one of my clients asked that I check out a product called BizAutomator, and he provided a link to the website where this product was described. Here’s an extract of what I read…

BizAutomator can…

• Automatically take care of repetitive customer inquiries so that you can free up your time for more complicated work
• Quickly and easily relay technically complex answers that you’ve previously obtained from a computer-savvy person to customers who want to know the answers
• Ensure 100% gramatically-correct, error-free, professional answers every time by responding with perfectly pre-defined templates to your emails
• Perform tedious web design tasks such as setting up just the right table alignment with just a few simple keystrokes
• Write scripts and software code even if you don’t know how by inserting code templates that you receive from a programmer or download from the Internet
• Remember all of your affiliate links and URLs so that you have them at your fingertips, so that next time when you want to tell someone about a web site you can just hit a few keystrokes and insert the right information
• Automatically type a signature for you on message boards and emails and get some free advertising in around the clock
• Instantly insert phone numbers, addresses, and email addresses into documents and emails by just typing a pre-defined “nickname” or “alias” (for example, type “john’s email” and BizAutomator will type “john@hotmail.com” into whatever document you’re typing in)

Whatever you do on the computer, BizAutomator can automate and simplify it, which will directly result in you having more free time to make more money and just plain relax.

Sounds pretty good, Eh? but, since I had been asked to comment on the product by next step was to see if there was an alternative, perhaps more in the mainstream. Being a Mac user I already use TextExpander which has similar capabilities and I assumed that there would be a equivalent application for the PC.

A simple little search found RoboType (version 3). Here’s an extract from the RoboType description…

Do you find yourself typing the same phrases and paragraphs repeatedly? Perhaps you prepare business documents that contain standard paragraphs. Or maybe you’re a tech-support provider and you have to answer the same questions over and over via e-mail. Do you constantly have to type the same long and complicated URLs? You could save your reusable text in a document and cut and paste from there, but that approach is clumsy. Some programs have macro expansion facilities, but not all. RoboType 3, which adds a text-expansion feature to almost any Windows program, is a better solution. You define abbreviations for the words, phrases, and paragraphs that you frequently type and RoboType 3 does the rest, replacing your abbreviations with the expanded text. This latest update of RoboType includes numerous enhancements. A new groups feature lets you organize your abbreviations by category. A new tag feature lets you use variables such as date and time when defining expansion text. And you’ll find many smaller refinements throughout the program.

Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the latter description which clearly describes many of the features of RoboType. The question is, which are you most likely to download, BizAutomator with its list of benefits or RoboType with its description of features?

Although I have not used either of these applications, there is no doubt that an application which efficiently converts typed shortcuts into previously remembered content is highly likely to improve your efficiency and the amount of work you can get done in a day (assuming, of course, that your work involves a significant amount of typing).

You can buy BizAutomator at http://www.BizAutomator.com (about $67).

I’m not sure about the continuing availability of RoboType (or its compatibility with Vista) which was originally released in 2002. You can find out more here

A few more Google searches failed to find more than one alternative application. This is texter from lifehacker.

If you are using a text expander on your Windows PC please let us know via a comment.

Anyway, the actual application is a bonus-the purpose of this post was to reflect on the nature of features versus benefits!

If you are the owner of a web site, and seriously interested in making it achieve tangible results for your business, I can almost guarantee that you will find at least one idea to implement from each of the 10 Chapters in this book. Even if you have entrusted your site design to a graphic designer, “Save the Pixel” will give you the ability to get the best possible value from your expenditure on your site design.

I have long espoused the need to make your web presence achieve real and valid marketing or business development targets. The New Year, or maybe the global downturn, has prompted a spate of site reviews.

Save the Pixel

This is where “Save the Pixel” by Ben Hunt comes in. Having an hour to kill at my hairdresser this afternoon, I invested that time in reading this eBook. After the third “aha”, I knew that this was a resource which needed to be shared.

What I really liked about Ben’s approach to the subject of design is his liberal use of “before and after” case studies. These examples are always directly relevant to the aspect of design or layout covered by the chapter. The examples generally make it easy to both understand the point being made, and form a view on its relevance to your site.

Now I’m not saying that I agree with every point made by Ben, but even where I have an alternative view, this book made me stop and reassess my own views.

Here is the Preface to the book…

The Art of Simple Web Design

The essence of the “Save the Pixel” philosophy; web design disciplines, including “Enough and no more”, Occam’s Razor, “Design the Content — not the box”, and “Think-then-do”.

1. Why are we here?

Knowing your own purpose; tips to get simple, realistic, specific goals; applying “Think-then-do” to goals.

2. Make a site for its visitors

Your visitors are your friends! Clarify who’s going to use your web site, what they want, and what signs will check the little boxes in their heads; Affirming positives.

3. Spread the smell of success

How to retain visitors’ trust and achieve the site’s goals by moving visitors smoothly towards their own goals; Win-win solutions.

4. The simple shall inherit the world wide web

How simplicity is good for everyone — and good business sense; the power of conventions; when to break conventions; be smart, not clever.

5. Getability and the brand

How to make every page on your web site instantly understandable; How to develop a brand for the web.

6. Layout

The first goal of layout is great getability; understanding and assigning screen real estate; columns; cascade; ownership & containment; focal point.

7. Navigation

Navigation helps people know where they are, where they can go, and gives them the means to get there easily; what mechanisms to use; what options to show; labelling navigation options; ordering your options.

8. Noticeability

How to manage the visitor’s attention to help them stay on the site and find what they want; how to use size, contrast, boldness, colour, space, illusion of 3D, and movement to manage the eye and draw attention to the most relevant elements; how noticeability changes down the page; ignorability.

9. Give me space

The vital importance of space in noticeability; how to get the right balance; the golden rule of spacing; space should be relative to size; why space is better than pixels.

10. Design your content

Great web page design keeps the focus on meaningful content, not on the background that’s common to every page; tips for writing better text and using imagery effectively.

You can buy a copy of Save the Pixel - I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.

I just received what is probably the first of many Valentine’s Day promotion. It came in the form of an email from Apple to my iPhone. The promotion’s subject line is “Show the Love. Give iPod Nano this Valentine’s Day“

The email offers me free engraving of an iPod, gives me links to a Valentine’s Gift List from the Apple Shop and explains why an iPod as a gift will bring me adoration from the recipient.

I’m telling you all this, not because of any promotion of Apple, but because the email reminded me that all big businesses will have decided on their Valentine’s Day promotions month’s ago… and you’ll start seeing them rolled out them over the next four weeks or so.

The question is, have you got a Valentine’s Day promotion planned?

If you’re quick you might still have time to get on the bandwagon, to your advantage. Ask yourself…

• How can I associate my product or service with the concept of Love?
• What about associations with Giving?
• Can I come up with a zany connection with Valentine’s Day

Gift Certificates, 2 for 1 Offers (one for you and one for your loved one), Bonus product/discount from now until Valentine’s Day - just because we love you all spring to mind. But, with a bit of thought, I’m sure that you’ll be able to come up with an idea relevant to your business which will positively impact your bottom line in the coming weeks.

Don’t just think in terms of additional sales (although in these times more sales are not to be sneezed at), but also think about taking this opportunity to gathering new prospects for future sales when times get even tougher. Think also in terms of showing some love to your most important asset, your existing clients.

And, if your business does not fit well into the pink, feel-good February 14th, or if you simply won’t have time to implement a promotion on such short notice, why not look a bit further ahead and start planning now for an Easter Promotion.

Above all, there is an adage that I always try to remember if I am tempted to summarily discard a suggestion for change…

If I keep doing the same as before … I’ll keep getting more of the same results.

Or …

If you want to change the outcomes, change the inputs!

A colleague shared this link with me earlier today. Apart from the fact that the page lists what would have to be close to all on-line Newspapers in Australia, it struck me that if you wanted to target a particular region for any reason, this page would be a good starting point!

The same site actually lists Newspapers from around the world (on-line versions)… See the full list here.

Of course you’re using Google Analytics to analyse traffic to your site, aren’t you! And you are checking the Analytics report regularly.

But, do you know what the reported “Bounce Rate” means?

It’s quite simple really, but also very telling… the bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who only read the page that they saw when they arrived at your site. In other words, a bounce rate of 56.4% means that 56 out of each 100 visitors to your site do not click on any links on your site!

What’s a “good” bouce rate? Well our client sites experience bounce rates of between 45 and 85% But even if your site is at the higher end of the range, a good bounce rate for your site is one which is lower that it was last week.

To Do…

Here are a few ideas which you could adopt to improve your site’s bounce rate.

• Make sure that in-text links are obviously links. One school of thought suggests that links should always be displayed in blue, because that is the default used by simple sites for many years now.

• Make sure that links are “active”. By this I mean that when hovered over, a link changes characteristics (becomes underlined, bold, changes colour etc)

• Make sure that your links have a tool tip. If this is so, you’ll see that little box with details of the link when hovered over. Ideally, the tool tip should provide your visitor with an incentive to click on the link.

• Place links in close proximity to where your visitor will be looking. A good example of this would be to arrange the visual flow for a shopping cart content as
  1. image
  2. description
  3. price
  4. order now button

• Break up menus into small logical groups of links with headings.

• Make sure that each visual element of your page has a clear indication of the next step that you want your visitor to take.

Action Plan …

Set yourself a target to reduce your site’s Bounce Rate by testing a change each week.