Packaging for a Website can be a very important factor in starting your online business. While many new business startups mistook about having a very nice web design as the only brand packaging, it is actually not just about that. In fact, we don’t need a very custom-made professional-looking website to package our brand. We are looking for the quality of the contents that you are going to contribute more than just the first impression to create an effect.
Contents Packaging
Content is King. I know this phrase is being over-emphasized many times in different websites. But let me explain some more. Many of you know that your site is indexed mainly from the contents that you have written. But do you also realize that the visitors are really looking for contents when they first stumbled upon your site? Yes, you do know for sure! But let’s take a step-by-step scenario below:
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I want to know to know something about stocks.
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I search for keyword called “stock investment”.
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A list of sites is shown right before me in the search engine.
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I choose one of them and take a quick browse about stocks.
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I couldn’t find it.
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So I leave and look for another site that can help me.
Do you see that when I first stumbled upon a site, I am looking for relevant keywords subconsciously… This is how Google works when they collect the keywords in your site to be indexed for the searchers to find relevant sites.
Try answering yourself these few questions when packaging your contents.
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How did your website capture your first-time visitors, so that they wouldn’t feel like strangers?
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Do you have an “About Us” page to introduce yourself in the website?
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Do you provide information that caters to what the visitors wanted to see?
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Do you have some goal conversion in your website to capture interested first-time visitors before they leave?
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Do you have contents to provide for the mass. (E.g. Blogs or some articles on your site for visitors to read.)
Form Follows Function
Have you heard of this phrase “Form Follows Function”? It shouldn’t be unfamiliar to the product designers who design various kinds of products such as mobile phones, cars, furniture, television, watches, and any other products that we can buy. Something that we can learn from here is that these products are confirmed by their functions first, before talking about the design to wrap around it. Likewise in a website business, we have to work out the functionality of a website even before we start talking about the appearance of the website.
Website Packaging
A few points about Website Packaging
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graphic designs to create icons, photograph editing, etc… It is also a way of packaging the website for an easier access when you are able to resize the pictures for easy viewing.
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photographs to add the human touch (or even just nature touch) to the website to create a more welcoming feeling to the visitors. Simply just add a human smiling. It feels like the visitor is interacting with the human directly…
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copywriting to create words that work. Having a better click through is the ultimate goal of a website copywriter, whether it is just clicking through to navigate, to access functions or to find out more from sponsors.
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web design has to suit the theme of the site where the topic is being discussed. You wouldn’t want to design a pinkish website talking about spiderman collectibles…. unless you really want to “stand out” from the rest.
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web interactivity for the users is pretty much important or else the website is probably just an online brochure. At least a simple contact-me form. If you did not, are you trying to restrict your prospective customers from buying from you?
Have you been working on the packaging for your website? I believe a lot of people recognize the importance of packaging their websites, and hence they spent lots of money building professional-looking websites. However, how professional should a website become? Ever since the success of Google’s simple web design, I have been hearing from a lot of internet marketers saying that plain is good. But how plain should a website be? In my opinion, so long as it is not so complicated and you maintain your website outlook for your readers to come back with the same familiarity, it is good enough.
Brand Packaging
This is the single most important thing in every business.
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It is the recognition of who you are…
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It is the focus of what you are doing…
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It is the vision of the whole business where it is heading towards…
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In other words, it is the “business plan” of what you are supposed to do!
Website could be one of the important factor in your brand packaging. If online business is your actual business, website is the single most important packaging! But if you are doing physical business, website is one of your overall packaging for your customers and prospects. Whichever business you are working on, take into consideration of packaging your brand around the 5 senses:
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See
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Feel
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Taste
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Smell
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Hear
Website could be providing the “See” and “Hear”. You might want to provide even more than that by giving away free CDs and papers to provide that “Feel”… Unless you are working on food, “Smell” is not possible to provide a packaging. You might want to provide a “Smell” by putting a unique smell in your free CDs and papers… Are you familiar with that box’s smell when we buy a new computer, monitor, TV or radio? That’s also an attack on “Smell”…
I have received gifts from the websites I have subscribed. It makes me feel so much closer to them when I get to read on papers, listen to audio, while surfing their websites and listening to their podcasts.
To have a long-term branding, we got to have our own look of website. Having a website with that icon will make everybody familiar with their “Sight” effect. They are very used to the look and feel of your website that if you made a little change, it might be very noticeable! And if you change your outlook every year or so, it will definitely give that extra fresh look of your site for your usual readers!
Conclusion
Having a website really covers at least Sight and Audio… Which is pretty much sufficient for any business to carry on so long as they have marketed their business well for a higher traffic coming into their site. You will really stand out from the rest when you are able to give that extra mileage with the assistance of delivery which can cost something like $5.40 for US Postage… Just think of some creative marketing to bring that branding near to your readers in as many senses as possible…
