We Know Who You Are....

The other thing that providing such information does is remind visitors that the credit union’s an organisation that knows what matters to them. That its reason for being is to help its members, not make a profit out of them.

In a way, it’s the sort of thinking that is the key to creating a good web advertising site. Put yourself in the place of your target market and then ask yourself what sort of content would make you want to visit, return to, recommend, send an email for more info, or better still, place an on-line order via a web site.

Up to this point, it may seem it’s enough for you to find a couple of web-literate computer hackers, feed them your own paper-based layouts/copy and sit back and let them turn it all into dazzling web pages. Well, not quite - there are a couple of other wrinkles you have to take into account:

What you’ll find is that a majority of the site-creators for hire are people who have dabbled in computers and perhaps have a vague understanding of digital graphics. If you’re lucky, all they’ll do for you is carry out your wishes. More often, though, because they don’t understand exactly why you do things the way you do, they’ll “improve” things for you, mostly without consultation, and almost certainly in a way that detracts from the site’s marketing effectiveness.

Not only do they lack experience of how the client/agency/customer relationship works, they are also frequently hostile to overly “commercial” content in the work.

Just think! You could spend thousands of your client’s dollars on an on-line testament to the artistic grooviness of a couple of web designers. What a bargain....not!

On the other hand, if you can find people who have both solid experience in web-site creation and a couple of decades of conventional advertising experience, the difference is remarkable. Not only will such people understand exactly what you’re looking for/going through, they’ll also be able to offer helpful advice. As they’re working in the medium day in, day out, they’ve probably already thought up more clever ways to market your client via the web than you ever will by staring at a blank layout pad or screen.

As a bonus, their industry experience means they won’t inflict these ideas on your client’s site without asking. Plus, as they have a mind to stay in this business well into next century, they are much less likely to demand six-figure sums for the project.

As far as the “Do-It-Yourself” option goes, there are a number of new computer programs designed to make web-page authoring pretty much a point-and-click affair. Probably the best known are Adobe Pagemill for the Macintosh and HotDog for the PC.

Nevertheless, our investigations have found that such programs are useable only for the simplest of personal pages. The sum works something like this: Save a few hundred dollars on the authoring, and you could find yourself paying a small fortune to get your pages working right on the server.

Such programs produce pages that appear fine when viewed on your own system, but tend to turn into a dog’s breakfast when loaded onto a server and viewed via the Internet.

Naturally, this is hardly the sort of impression your client wants to project to potential customers via the web. After all, everyone knows that a modern word-processor like Microsoft’s Word can produce fairly pleasant-looking pages on a laser printer. But would you use them as artwork for a client’s magazine ads? Not unless you were tired of the client’s business....

Next: A Ten-Point Guide....

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