Category Archives: Website design

Does Your Design Convey Your Message? A Simple Test

February 28, 2012 – 4:15 am

In any visual medium – be it an ad, catalog page, web page, HTML email, brochure, sell sheet or anything else – there’s one element that’s critical to ensuring your message is conveyed: (Click on the headline for more…)

By Val Gosset | Also posted in Advertising | Tagged , | Leave a Comment

A Superb Example of Using Content to Sell

January 3, 2012 – 4:15 am

I love finding great marketing techniques from other industries that could be applied to the gardening industry. The latest that I’ve come across is from River Pools & Spas, a fiberglass pool company based in Warsaw, Virginia. Judging from their website, the company understands that their prospects require a lot of education and hand-holding before they’re ready to buy. Not only is the site jam-packed with valuable information, but the way it’s organized is also instructive. (Click on the headline for more…)

By Val Gosset | Also posted in Marketing | Tagged | Leave a Comment

Lessons From the “Website of the Year”

July 1, 2011 – 4:15 am

Imagine creating a successful, easy-to-navigate website for 40,000 SKUs, many of them similar and all fairly mundane. Multichannel Merchant’s “Website of the Year” award winner, eBags.com, does just that. There are many impressive features of the site, not the least of which is the amount of reassurance it provides shoppers. Here are a few examples from the home page alone:
(Click on the headline for more…)

By Val Gosset | Leave a Comment

Leveraging Your Facebook Page On Your Website

February 22, 2011 – 4:15 am

Here’s an easy way to combine two rules of marketing:

1. People are naturally drawn to photos of other people

2. The more people that participate in a given activity, the easier it becomes to attract new people to the same activity

You can take advantage of these two rules (Click on the headline for more…)

By Val Gosset | Also posted in Facebook, Marketing | Tagged | Leave a Comment

A Mobile Marketing Primer

February 8, 2011 – 4:15 am

As if social media marketing didn’t present enough new material to master, here comes another: mobile marketing. Ignore it at your peril. Google mobile searches have increased 5 times in the last two years. By 2013, half of all web traffic is anticipated to come through mobile devices.

At the recent Direct Gardening Association conference, Danielle Leitch of MoreVisibility gave garden industry marketers an excellent primer on what they need to do to get ready. Among her key points: (Click on the headline for more…)

By Val Gosset | Tagged | Comments (1)

Good Examples of Cross-Pollinating With Social Media

December 28, 2010 – 4:15 am

Last week, we posted about clothng designer Lilly Pulitzer’s use of customer photos, which customers submit at the rate of 1,000 per week, according to the company’s profile in Internet Retailer’s Hot 100 Best Retail Web Sites.  In addition to customer photos, a tour of the Lilly Pulitzer site reveals some clever integration between their website and their Facebook and [...]

By Val Gosset | Also posted in Ecommerce, Facebook, Marketing, Social media | Tagged | Leave a Comment

What Great Content Can Do For Your Search Rankings

December 2, 2010 – 4:15 am

If you ever wondered how much adding informational content to your website can do for your business, here’s a great example: (Click on the headline for more…)

By Val Gosset | Also posted in Online marketing | Tagged | Comments (2)

Website Navigation Guidelines

November 3, 2010 – 4:15 am

Organizing website navigation in a way that’s intuitive is often a challenge. I just came across a site that should have been fairly simple to organize, due to a relatively small number of products – but instead I hit multiple bloopers. (Click on the headline for more…)

By Val Gosset | Tagged | Leave a Comment

Techniques to Lead Your Reader’s Eye

August 27, 2010 – 4:15 am

In an excellent presentation on catalog design at last week’s Mailorder Gardening Association conference, Lisa Hodgson Balch of Sargeant House Design Studio explained how the concept of “gaze motion” is especially important in the gardening world.

In a nutshell, gaze motion means (Click on the headline for more…)

By Val Gosset | Also posted in Advertising, Catalogs | Tagged | Leave a Comment

Burpee’s Campaign to Entice a New Generation of Gardeners

August 20, 2010 – 4:15 am

Garden industry marketers typically face the same challenge: our primary audience is downsizing or eliminating their gardens, and the generations that follow did not grow up learning how to garden. Consequently, even if gardening is of interest, they’re overwhelmed and intimidated about getting started.

Burpee has done a magnificent job of addressing new gardeners through (Click on the headline for more…)

By Val Gosset | Also posted in Advertising, Facebook, Marketing, Marketing goals | Tagged , | Leave a Comment
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