by Kathleen Fealy

Commercial websites can easily annoy visitors. Here are four good ways to do it.

1. Offer Assistance Too Quickly

Good business intentions don’t always succeed. Most commercial website owners want to capture leads and offer assistance to their visitors. But some inadvertently end up annoying these visitors by offering help too early or through annoying chat boxes.

A better way to offer assistance is a pop-up box that appears after the visitor has been on the page for at least 30 seconds or has clicked on at least one additional page. Verizon Wireless utilizes this method, deploying its interactive “Call Now” box after approximately 30 seconds on the site.

2. Solicit Information Too Quickly

When consumers use search engines, they are typically seeking information. If a business has used relevant keywords, and wrote good titles and descriptions for the search engines to display, then its site may be chosen by the consumer, who will click on your site and view its information.

3. Requiring Extra Clicks to Get Information

How often have you come to a web page to find that you have to click more links to get to the information you are looking for? Why couldn’t you just get there in the first attempt?

4. Automatically Play Music

Have you found yourself in the office or on a train and the site you visit starts playing music? Do you quickly look for the mute button? Give your visitor’s the ability to click “play” as the default option. Only then would your music start. It gives them the control they need based on their surroundings.

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by Rebecca Ray

Managers at small companies feel more pressure to translate their websites than five or ten years ago. Unfortunately, there is no universal “Translation 101” course where you can learn everything you need to know. To speed up your learning curve, here are three pointers to follow when translating your website.

1. Don’t Rush into Translating Your Website

Once you translate your website into another language, potential customers who speak that language will assume that your product or service is available according to their local business rules. Are you ready to read and respond to email requests in their languages? Can you provide local phone numbers to call for information and support? Do you accept their currency and make it easy for them to pay using their preferred payment methods?

2. Focus on What to Translate, Not How Much

Many companies, both big and small, become overwhelmed as they translate their websites because they assume that they must translate all of their content. Nothing could be further from the truth. Before fixating on the amount of words to be translated, perform an inventory of your web content. The goal is to determine what’s appropriate for local markets versus what should be discarded, adapted, or rewritten.

3. Provide Instructions, Style Guides, Help

If you were opening a new sales territory for the first time in your domestic market that had the potential to generate 30 percent or more of your revenue, would you hand it off to an outside service firm with no close oversight on your part? Would you neglect to train them on your products or educate them properly on marketing messages for your target audiences? Likely not. And yet, that’s exactly what you’re doing if you hand off web content to a translation company without the proper translation instructions, glossaries, or style guides. Translators also need easy access to someone at your company to answer their questions and to address their issues as they arise. You don’t want them guessing at how to interpret your marketing messages for potential international customers.

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by Kathleen Fealy

Does your website represent your business? Businesses in various stages of maturity need to review how they present themselves to their targeted visitors and if they are consistent in their branding and style.

A business in the early stages may still be defining its image and audience, while a company going through great growth, may have shifted its product or service offerings or its  targeted visitors. It’s important to take the time to see if the business reflects your current offerings and if that message is consistent across the various marketing platforms your business may be engaging in — like emails, social media sites, your website, YouTube, and anywhere else the business is represented.

When people look at websites, they make decisions about that site’s professionalism, safety, and whom the business serves. These decisions are made in a visitor’s mind in split seconds. According to a 2009 article in the Economist, people make decisions several seconds ahead of their awareness of a decision. Emotional connections can be made through pictures, perceived trust factors, and language.

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