Promotion Tip: Explain Your Site With A Tagline |
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| | www.iselong.com 作者:Larisa Thomason | |
摘要：Larisa Thomason, Senior Web Analyst, NetMechanic, Inc.
August 2002
Vol. 5, No. 15
• HTML Tip
• Promotion Tip
• Beginner Tip
When visitors come to your site, can they immediately tell what it's about? If not, they may leave before realizing how valuable your information is. Keep them interested with a clear and specific tagline that clearly communicates your site's value.
It's easy to confuse a branding tagline with an advertising slogan because the two are closely related. Most advertising campaigns have a tagline like Burger King's famous "Have it your way," but we're going to focus on creating a clear and concise tagline for your Web site, not for a short advertising blitz.
Display Your Value Proposition
Marketing professionals often refer to a company's "value proposition." It's the unique service or knowledge you supply that makes your business stand out from your competitors.
The best way to clearly state your value proposition online is through a prominent tagline displayed on your homepage or even as a part of your company logo.
Here are some examples of taglines that convey a value statement:
Huntsville Land Trust - "Preserving the land, enhancing the community."
Econo Lodge hotel chain - "Spend a night, not a fortune."
Bed and Breakfast Network - "Over 17,000 Bed and Breakfasts in the USA, Canada, and the Caribbean."
Search Engine Power Pack - "Your complete search engine ranking solution."
Each sentence is a clear statement of what the organization offers to consumers or the community.
Determining Your Site's Value
You should already have some idea of why your site is valuable to users, but that idea is often hard to translate into a single statement.
Begin by researching competitors' tagline - especially the top-ranked ones. Maybe you can learn something from their success. At least you'll have some idea of the value propositions you're competing against.
For even more ideas to get your creativity going, check out the AdSlogans Web site and browse through their Advertising Slogan Hall of Fame. Although most are geared towards advertising campaigns, you can get good ideas from them. Besides, they're fun to read!
Next, write a des cription of your site. Talk about its purpose and the unique benefits it offers visitors. Write 50 words or 500 words. Then read it carefully and rank the most important elements. Once you've identified the top three to five elements, you can begin drafting your tagline.
Key Elements Of A Good Tagline
Let's go back to your value proposition. What is the key benefit that distinguishes your site from others offering similar information or services? That's what you need to publicize in your tagline.
Shorter is better. You only have one sentence to describe what your site is about, what it does, and how it adds value to the user. A good place to start is to review the META des cription tag and TITLE tag on your home page. The information contained both tags is vital to looking good in search results on some search engines. Your des cription, title, and tagline should all complement each other. In some cases, they may even match.
Be clear and focused. Remember that you're selling the benefits of your site, not the features! Don't waste space with a list of your product names. Instead communicate how your products help solve problems.
Include keywords. A good tagline should include the keywords you're targeting on your home page. If you find that you can't use your targeted keywords to describe your value proposition, then you may be using the wrong keywords!
Search Engine Power Pack has a keyword selection tool that will help you select the best keywords for your site.
Boring is ok. Don't think that you have to dazzle the visitors with your brilliance and writing skill. Avoid superlatives and just describe your site. "Accountants for the stars!" is less informative than the more staid "Expert financial planning advice for actors, artists, and dance professionals."
Of course, if you can come up with a pithy and creative value statement, then that's great. But it's a lot more important to clearly communicate with the statement than it is to sweep visitors away on a flight of clever wordplay.
Once You Have It, Use It
Now that you've spent all that time and effort to develop your tagline, use it!
Even though it was developed it for your Web site, a good tagline enhances all your business communications:
Email signature lines
Business cards
Business stationery and letterhead
Print advertisements
Clever use of your tagline is yet another way to promote your site without going broke.
If you're looking for even more tips and techniques to help with site promotion, check out NetMechanic's online search engine promotion tool, Search Engine Power Pack. It will guide you through the bewildering process of selecting keywords, writing META tags, optimizing page content, and submitting to search engines.
Even though a growing number of webmasters use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) on their pages, most still control page layout with tables. And at some point during the design process, they're sure to struggle with the HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes in TABLE and TD tags. Browsers don't always interpret those attributes like you expect.
Setting The Minimums
In previous newsletter stories, we've advised you to always use he WIDTH attribute in your TABLE and TD tags. Like HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes on images, the WIDTH attribute in tables gives browsers vital information about your page layout and make pages at least appear to render more quickly.
But sometimes designers get confused by what height and width really tell a Web browser. If you set a table's HEIGHT to 500 pixels and the WIDTH to 740 pixels, then the table will always be that size, right?
Wrong.
HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes set the minimum size of the table, not the maximum. If the page elements are larger than the table size you've specified, then the table will always expand to accommodate them. Tables have to be able to stretch to fit your page content. Otherwise browsers wouldn't be able to display your page!
My Page Is HOW Wide?
That means that you have to be very careful when you're setting the size of your page elements - especially the images. It's pretty easy to get an unexpected scrollbar when your table has to stretch to fit a large image.
This problem most often happens on a site's home page when the site logo or banner is wider than the table. The person coding the page may set the table width at 760 pixels wide, but then the graphic artist sends a logo that measures 780 pixels wide, and then there's another page element for the same line that measures 40 pixels wide.
The result: the table is suddenly 820 pixels wide instead of the expected 780 pixels! Suddenly, the page you designed to display perfectly at 800x600 and higher screen resolutions has a horizontal scrollbar.
That's not the only problem though. Suppose the page had a really tight layout that depended on each page element displaying in a "pixel perfect" manner? When the table stretches, the layout may not display as desired - especially if you have a lot of text wrapped around images.
Keep Measurements Consistent
Some browsers may get confused if you mix percentage widths and fixed widths in your TABLE and TD tags - like a TABLE WIDTH="740" and a TD tag set to WIDTH="65%". Since you're mixing width types, browsers may have trouble rendering the page.
It's a lot safer to select either fixed or percentage measurements for your tables and keep the system consistent on the page. Always explicitly define the WIDTH attributes of all your TD tags to avoid the Netscape bug that produces unpredictable column widths.
The best way to define widths in tables (fixed or percentage) is a matter of some debate among Web designers. In an upcoming Design Tip, we'll discuss the difference between a fixed table layout (where the width is always the same) and a liquid layout (where the table stretches or compresses to fit the browser window). Either option seriously impacts how your page displays in different browsers and screen resolutions.
Other design choices can also affect how your page displays on a number of operating systems and in different browsers. Use NetMechanic's Browser Photo tool to quickly find and fix display problems before they drive away visitors. Browser Photo shows you actual screen shots of your Web page in 16 different browsers, operating systems, and screen resolution combinations.
Learn more about browser display problems - and how to avoid them - in our online Browser Compatibility Tutorial.
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