How To Use Website Technology To Inform And Persuade Your Visitors

Gimmick Or Tool?

Before you commission a costly Flash presentation, or a video of your product range for your Website, you must first ask yourself if it is going to increase the results you expect and require.

How many Websites have you visited have a fancy Flash intro page that you have actually watched; or do you frustratingly click on 'Skip Intro' to get into the main pages?

If you have a broadband connection, a powerful computer, and the time to watch, then you will be greatly entertained by the lengthy presentation. You will also no doubt have been given a great deal of information, but are you more likely to be persuaded?

There are no reliable figures yet available that proves using hi-tech features like Flash, streaming video, audio clips, and all the other new methods to make a sales presentation actually increase the response rate.

Video Messages Can Work

Where video is very successful in selling products, is when you use it for credible testimonials from people who provide contact information.

A message from a happy and satisfied customer can improve response rates by 200% according the research from Entrepreneur.

In the days before Websites became popular, I used to e-mail some 100,000 newsletters and course prospectus information to prospective college students. We sent out all our material as Black & White laser printed A4 sheets, and then we decided that printing it in colour would increase the enrolment rate. It cost twice as much, but we were confident of a great result.

The finished mailing piece was bright, colourful, and included many attractive offers, but the enrolment ration was less than 30% of the old B & W version.

Another example is the text e-mail versus the HTML version, which is far more attractive and colourful, but is often much less effective and gets fewer results. The professionals now provide a link in their text message for people who want to view in HTML.

New technology works, at a price, and you have to decide if it is worth that cost. Click on the link below to see a short example:

Play Flash Demo

Play Flash Clock

Audio Clips

Research tells us that people take 25% longer to read from a monitor compared to reading hard copy, while 33% of people find it difficult to learn from reading a subject and prefer to be told about it.

Another interest fact is that when you support your Webpage with audio clips that read aloud and emphasize your vital issues, memory retention increases by some 50% or more.

Click on the Play button, to hear a midi file of selected music.

Some Website like to play music while a visitor looks at a page, others like to play a testimonial or sales script for their products.

Your sound clip can be a sales message or customer testimonial for one of your products, and these are proving very popular.

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