Web Marketing Category
Marketing to Teens? Try These Website Tactics.
You would expect the smartphone generation to navigate the web effortlessly. But, a new study released by Nielsen Norman shows that teens (13-17) might be more confident than capable of using the Internet.
One of the biggest differences between adults and teens was the ability to complete tasks given by the researchers. e.g. buying a sweater in an e-store. Surprisingly, adults were 14 percent more successful at completing their assignments.
So what’s going on? Jakob Nielsen notes that teens have “insufficient reading skill, less sophisticated research strategies, and dramatically lower levels of patience.”
It’s also possible that old people (25-35) build many teen targeted websites and serve up one-size fits all web experiences.
How to Repel a Teen from Your Website
Call a teen a kid, and you can kiss that sale goodbye. Teens resent being lumped in with kids. So watch your language and title on
your navigation.
Slow loading graphics or widgets repel teens. Most of them use secondhand equipment with slower computing speeds and Internet connections. Remember, this is an impatient audience.
Getting personal. Teens value their privacy. They’re very suspicious of any attempt to shake loose personal information. So don’t ask!
Are you targeting teens on the web? We highly recommend reading the entire overview report on the Nielsen Norman web site.
How to Evaluate Your Email Newsletter
After we send an email, some of us like to watch the opens in a real time. (We can stop whenever we want.) In the interim, it’s fun to hypothesize why some stories get a lot of clicks and others don’t. While this is great fun, we decided this methodology is useless. There are simply too many variables that affect clicks: position on page, the headline, the topic, news, weather, time of day, season, business category, and day of week just to name a few.
Now we have a better solution. Instead of looking at just one issue, we aggregated the data from 12 months on all the stories and articles including remails. The articles are placed into categories, e.g. home tips, fixtures and lighting, and the categories are ranked according to popularity. This still isn’t scientific, because you haven’t corrected for all the variables. But you’ll spot trends that you can A-B test for in future issues.
Target Your Niche with B2B Search Engines
Google is the undisputed 800-pound gorilla of general search with 65% of all searches. But there’s growing excitement about B2B search engines that target vertical markets.
Most B2B customers start with Google or one of the other biggies, but as they refine their search they switch to smaller search engines, like KnowledgeStorm, that target niche markets. It works out for everyone. The customer finds the detailed information they need fast. And companies receive click-thrus with much higher conversion rates. Many of these sites also offer paid search, which, on a smaller scale, can easily outperform services like AdWords.
We’ve listed some of the major B2B search engines below. It’s also a good idea to Google (ha, ha) the name of your category or industry with the term search engine. You might turn up a couple high school kids running a directory in their basement, or you could find a treasure. Here’s a flavor of what’s out there:
Start Your Search with These B2B Biggies
- Business.com: With 6 million visitors per month, this is the largest B2B search engine. Sponsored search is syndicated to more than 100 other business sites.
- IT.com: Targets IT industry with general and narrowed search.
- Jayde: Includes company profiles and links to internal web pages.
- GlobalSpec: Serves engineering, manufacturing and technical market segments.
- Alibaba: Called the “online dating service for global business,” has 27 million members in 200 countries.
- TooToo: Refines searches by category or type of business.
- CleanHound: Information for the janitorial executive.
Now, find the B2B search engine tailored for your business.
