This is not a fairy story. It’s not even a fable…
David Byrne in 2006. "How did I get here?"
But it is a chance to reflect on some of the things that can help make your web presence fabulous. And when I say fabulous I mean delivering more traffic, more conversions and communicating with your audience.
Breadcrumbs are usually taken to mean the navigation text that appears on some sites to help you locate your present position within the site. For example: home> about> music> talking heads. The same way that the hapless protagonists did in the venerable Grimm fairy story. But I’m introducing a better analogy.
Every time you leave a sign of your existence on the web, and offline as well, you leave a trail that can be followed. While links are important, it goes beyond that. Here’s what I mean:
You have an utterly amazing website that leaves visitors out of breath and searching for a cigarette a couple of minutes after they land on it. It’s a beauty and you are very proud. You don’t want to encourage smoking, but you do want them coming back for more! You want them to ask themselves:
Well, how did I get here?, as David Byrne wrote…
Ok you say, they just Googled mysite.amazing .com (a navigational search – but that’s another post) or just the keywords “amazing website breathless” or the like. It worked out right? Yes and no. What user searches did you miss? And where else could that interest have come from?
It’s increasingly obvious that a great website is worthless without visitors. Getting visitors goes a long way further than just optimising the site for search engines, and even gathering quality backlinks.
In 2010, our audience has a diverse range of signals that are monitored. There’s traditional media – not many advertisers are using QR codes yet, but with adoption rates for smartphones going through the roof, how many will be attaching these little barcodes to every thing from the sides of buses to tee shirts, business cards and sale advertisements?
QR codes on an advertising poster
Radio advertising almost always finishes with a “check us out at www.mysite.amazing. com” tagline.
And then there’s social media:
Your friend liked your site on Facebook. Her friend also liked it and the signal went to her network – at an average of 80 friends per user, by the third generation of likes your website could have been recommended by Word of Mouth to over 500,000 Facebook users. (80 by 80 by 80). Of course this is the now familiar Viral Marketing Effect, but as Facebook surpasses 500 million users, the effects are likely to become more and more pronounced for those that master this game.
Twitter. Same thing – “I just got breathless and searched for a cigarette (even though I have never smoked) on this uber-cool website: http://bit.ly/1l3Ynj” . Your mate saw this tweet, loved the site and retweeted to his network. All these instances are breadcrumbs, leaving navigational signals scattered across the web – and beyond. It’s the future, and it’s here today.
You get the idea by now.
Web users are getting smarter by the day. You’ve got to be where they are looking. Think of your customer as an modern-day master Aboriginal tracker. Where you might see desert, he sees a roadmap. And the next campsite is yours…
