How to Craft a Privacy Policy for Your Website
Does your website have a privacy policy?
This article will tell you what you need to know to create a privacy policy for your website.
Why a Privacy Policy?
As online professionals and entrepreneurs, you know that collecting information on visitors to your (or your client’s) website can help tailor goods and services. It offers insight that previously could only be gathered through expensive research. Today, though, data collection can be easy and inexpensive.
But with this type of information, businesses face a daunting task of protecting the data and telling visitors and/or consumers what will be done with the information. Regardless of whether site visitors read the terms and conditions, companies can’t overlook the creation of policies that set out how such information will be used.
Example of a well-placed privacy policy and descriptive link. Disney Muppets website.
Interestingly, except for regulated industries, there is no federal law requiring an online business to have a privacy policy. More importantly, no company has ever been sued for not having a privacy policy. But, for those businesses located in California or those that do business in California (many online companies!), there is a California state law requiring the posting of a privacy policy.
As professionals in the online world, often we’re expected to know all of the rules and regulations when it comes to what a company can and cannot collect or do with the information that is collected. Marketing wants to collect certain information and use it as a competitive advantage, but the company as a whole may want to convey a different sense of privacy, which creates internal conflict.
Privacy and personal data collection are areas where consulting with legal counsel may be necessary if your industry is regulated or if you want to be very aggressive with the data collected. The collection methods also need to be confirmed with the IT professionals who create the back-end tools.
In addition, following the policy set forth is imperative so there is no risk of sanctions. This is why having a policy custom-tailored will always be better than using a stock policy or cutting and pasting from what you find on the Internet.
The Elephant in the Room
It wouldn’t be a complete discussion about online privacy without mentioning Facebook and the recent ruling by the FTC that the social network deceived consumers by telling them their information was private when in fact the data was exploited beyond what was agreed.
While Facebook was not fined, the settlement is quite strict and obligates Facebook to undergo third-party reviews for 20 years.
Sometimes young companies learn the hard way. Facebook.com
For a platform that relies on users sharing information, Facebook turned a blind eye to the disparity between what they agreed to do and what, in fact, they did. But consumers are very savvy and complaints ignored by the company were taken to the FTC.
The social network faced the potential for millions of dollars in fines. Ultimately, though, that may have been a lesser punishment than what was agreed upon because of the length of monitoring.
Unlike for most companies, users of Facebook are highly involved and very vocal. Even though the company is still in its infancy, this big stumble was likely a wake-up call. Not just for the social network, but also for the online business community as a whole. Consumer deception is becoming a bigger concern, and Internet users are savvier with each passing day.
Creating a Great Privacy Policy
When you think of the policies and disclosures that belong on websites, it should come as no surprise that big companies have them drafted by a team of lawyers. If you’ve ever read them, you’d agree.
However, when it comes to a privacy policy, sometimes the best thing to do is write it out yourself first. You know best what you’re doing with the information. When it’s done, run it past an attorney.
What to Include in a Privacy Policy
First, and foremost, write it in plain English (or if your primary language is something else, then that language). Determine what information you would be gathering—email, cookies, subscription information, credit card, login, gender, age, etc.—and make sure there is a legitimate reason for collection. And once you have all this information, identify what you are doing with it.
Next comes putting it together—all it takes is 8 easy steps to an awesome privacy policy!
- Write in language that is easy to read and understand.
- Explain what information will be collected and whether it will be identifying or anonymous. If it’s both, say so.
- Without getting into lengthy detail, explain how it’s collected (such as search terms, sign-up, log files, clicked links, cookies).
- If you’ll share information with affiliated, partner or other sites, be clear about this. Most people are concerned with who else is getting their information.
- Simply state that if compelled by law to disclose, then you’ll comply with such orders.
- Give readers the option of verifying, correcting, changing or removing personal registration information. I suggest having a separate email for this purpose so you know exactly the nature of this communication.
- Provide a way for people to opt out of future communication. If someone wants to be removed, make it easy. Having a “privacy policy email” allows for these types of communications to be routed for easy handling.
- State that the policy will be updated periodically and how you will communicate such changes.
Privacy Policy Best Practices
Creating, updating, monitoring or managing privacy policies and practices may not be your responsibility. But that doesn’t mean you should ignore possible missteps. More importantly, those who are responsible may not know the rules, regulations or best practices.
For those who are responsible, whether it’s part of your job because you’re an entrepreneur and everything is your responsibility, or you’re hoping to add this area to your book of knowledge, there are best practices to keep in mind.
- Don’t ignore the FTC or state laws that provide minimum standards.
- Write the policy in plain English. If you have a lawyer draft your policy, ask that it be written so your consumer or visitor will clearly understand.
- Don’t cut and paste something you found for free on the Internet. Because the risk of penalties is very real, this is not the time to be cheap. Your policy should be your own and reflect the unique circumstances of your site.
- Update your policy regularly to reflect changes in the online environment, what your company actually does with information and clarify areas that may be vague. And once it’s updated, communicate the update!
- Follow the policy! If there is only one thing learned from the FTC sanctions of Facebook, it is that you should follow your policy and not engage in deceptive practices.
- Allow consumers, readers, forum visitors or others to opt out of having their personal information retained. And then follow through with their wish.
- Make your policy easy to find and accessible. One of the biggest complaints I hear is that the policies are buried or inaccessible due to broken links.
- Ensure that the stored information is, indeed, secure. Security breaches are not only very costly in terms of having to invest in infrastructure, the potential disclosure or sale of private information can be devastating.
- Utilize a well-respected privacy certification program to add credibility.
- Do not ask for intrusive or excessively personal information unless it’s absolutely necessary. Consumers are getting savvier and are less willing to provide sensitive information if they don’t feel the situation merits such an intrusion. If you need this information, be clear as to why and include how you will protect the data.
Conclusion
Putting up a sign may work for your garden, but not for your online business. Image: freedigitalphotos.net
Privacy policies are often not given the attention they deserve. Many companies churn them out, not realizing their true importance. While not everyone will read the policy, it’s these types of policies that say a lot about what the company stands for and what it wants to achieve. Information is key to future growth. It provides insight that can’t be replicated in other ways.
Most companies don’t have the resources or reputation that the largest social networking site has, and being singled out for deceptive practices could easily crush them.
Success tomorrow depends on not just doing the right thing today, but doing it every day. Most of us want our information kept secure. And our most valuable asset—our customers, users and community members—do too.
What do you think? Have you written a policy for your business? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.
* This article does not specifically address policies regarding children under 13. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”) will be addressed in a future treatment.
Disclosure: While Sara Hawkins is an attorney, this article is for informational purposes only and is not to be considered legal advice.
Image: Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Read More9 Tips for Integrating Social Media on Your Website
Are you leveraging the power of social media on your site?
Together, social media channels and your website should work seamlessly to promote your online brand.
However, if you’re like most businesses, you’re probably missing out on potential interactions, impressions and ultimately sales.
In this article, I’ll dive into a quick how-to guide to ensure your business website and social media platforms are working together to maximize your online exposure.
I’ve included examples from small- to medium-sized businesses that specialize in a whole host of fields to illustrate that you don’t have to be one of the big players to take advantage of these simple tips.
#1: Include Visible Social Media Buttons
This seems like a no-brainer, but double-check. Best practices suggest that social media buttons be displayed on the top, bottom or along the side of your home page. Links or buttons that remain in your navigation as the user moves from page to page are optimal.
To ensure that users don’t exit your web page altogether, you may want to create the buttons or links so that they open your social media pages in new windows.
Also, do not feel obligated to link out to all social media channels you’ve created or dabbled in. If you’re fonder of Twitter and have completely abandoned your Facebook page, there’s no reason to link to any outlet that is not being actively managed. In fact, linking out to inactive channels can ultimately cause more harm than good.
There are several ways in which to display your buttons or links and none of them are wrong. In this case, it is more of a design preference focused on how the user will be interacting with the site.
Below are some examples of ways in which websites have successfully displayed their social media outlet(s).
Big and bold button catches your eye.
This eCommerce site specializing in alternatives to dog and horse supplements only links out to Facebook and chooses to do so in a big and bold manner.
Subtle buttons suit some sites well.
This farm credit services business subtly displays their social media buttons at the bottom of their page.
Front-and-center buttons ensure visibility.
This artist decides to feature his along the top.
#2: Integrate Social Where it Makes Sense
If you use social media to keep your customers or clients apprised of your recent happenings and are actively managing your outlets on a daily or bi-weekly basis, it might be wise to showcase your Twitter feed or Facebook posts directly on your website.
Linking out or displaying inactive social media channels will only cripple your online efforts. If you choose to go this route, it is important that you maintain your presence.
Below are two examples of how vastly different businesses (a web design firm and an online gift card site) have integrated their social media feeds into their websites.
On this site, tweets are visible along the right-hand side throughout the website. Tweets vary from deals and contests to interactions with followers and customer service responses.
On this B2B site, recent tweets are found at the bottom of the homepage and are mostly comprised of industry-related blogs, recent events and projects in which they've participated.
These businesses vary significantly in what they do and the way they make use of social media, but both have found a logical method of incorporating social media into their sites.
#3: Include Up-to-Date Buttons
Social media changes fast—dare we say in real time? So if you added your buttons a year ago, they are probably palling around with the dinosaurs. Facebook fans morphed into Likes, group pages died, +1 is spanking new and LinkedIn improved significantly. Do research to find the most current social media terminology so you don’t get caught mumbling about “The Facebook” and “The Twitter.”
Social Media Examiner stays up to date.
In order to maintain credibility within this ever-changing realm, it is important to stay with the times. However, staying up to date with your terminology does not mean that you need to jump on every platform that springs up. It is important to be tactful with your social media choices and do your research before blindly forging into unknown territory.
#4: Include Share Buttons
If you sell a product or run a full-fledged eCommerce site and you haven’t added share buttons to your product pages, you are missing out on a whole host of potential social impressions.
Share buttons should enable website-goers to seamlessly share or recommend a product.
If you find yourself hard up for a broad solution for this, check out AddThis or ShareThis. Both provide efficient and easy-to-use solutions for social media sharing across eCommerce sites with the added benefit of analytics to see how the content is getting shared.
As illustrated below, these buttons are easy to see.
The easier you make it for customers to share your product, the better.
Similar to eCommerce sites, if you have resources, articles, a blog or other valuable content on your site, you should attempt to make it as simple as possible for readers to share it with others. Social media share buttons should be displayed somewhere easy to see. Nicholas Creative does a decent job with this, as seen on their blog below.
If you enjoy an article, you won't want to keep it to yourself.
#5: Use Analytics
Pay attention to the way in which individuals are using your social media buttons by tapping into Google Analytics. How many people are actually clicking on your outbound social media links?
An easy way to explore this is by setting up Event Tracking in Google Analytics. If you’re unfamiliar with Event Tracking, Google provides a step-by-step guide on how to incorporate the correct codes into your site.
Google Analytics allows you to track the number of individuals who click on outbound links by setting up Event Tracking.
If you find that few individuals explore your social media outlets once landing on your page, perhaps your social media buttons aren’t in a convenient location. It’s always best to have actual numbers to back up your choices.
#6: Pay Attention to Terms and Conditions
This goes hand in hand with staying up to date and knowledgeable, but I continue to see major brands using social media in ways that violate platforms’ terms and conditions.
You cannot use Google+ for contest entries, a personal Facebook page shouldn’t be used to operate a brand and there are certain rules to adhere to when running a promotion on Facebook.
The way you use social media reflects on your website, as well as your brand as a whole. If you’ve accidentally violated some terms and conditions in the past, delete those pages and do not link out to them even in the interim.
I'm not sure what Pita Pit is doing with this personal Facebook page or if it was created by an unaffiliated party. Whatever the case may be, steer clear of using a personal page as a brand page.
#7: Don’t Over-Do It
You want to make sure that compelling information is easily shareable, but littering social media share buttons all over your webpage isn’t the way to go. Before adding share buttons to a page, ask yourself, “Is there information here that people would find worth sharing?”
If you find yourself on your “About Us” page and don’t see any added value to website-goers being able to share your administrative assistant’s contact information, then forgoing buttons in this instance is totally acceptable.
#8: Stay Knowledgeable
Don’t get it twisted. With the changing social media landscape and array of rollouts these days, it is easy to confuse social media features. Keep in mind:
- You won’t be directing individuals to your Facebook page by installing a Facebook “Like” button on a specific website page. Instead, you are allowing individuals to “Like”/share the information, content or product that is found on that specific website page. There is no correlation between Liking a specific website page and directing users to “Like” your branded Facebook page.
- Similarly, directing individuals to your Google+ brand page is different than adding a +1 button to a page. At this time, there is no correlation between the two.
As illustrated below on this pool supplies website, social media pages and social media share buttons can be found on the same page. Verbs such as “Tweet” and “Share” often help distinguish between share buttons and social media pages.
Be sure you know the difference.
#9: Use Social Media Insights Alongside Google Analytics
Many types of software allow you to see your social media insights alongside your web analytics in order to pick up on trends and to better understand the successes or failures of campaigns.
SproutSocial allows users to compare web analytics and social media reporting information from specific timeframes side by side. Being able to see the way in which your social media and website analytics relate proves useful in establishing goals, measuring successes and identifying areas in which you can improve.
Here's an example of the correlation between website traffic and a social media campaign via a SproutSocial report.
There you have it—a quick-and-dirty guide on immediate steps you can take to make your social media and business website play nice.
Do you have any tips or things to avoid at all costs? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.
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Read More3 Ways to Use YouTube to Drive Traffic to Your Website
Are you wondering how to get people from YouTube to your website?
Are you looking for ideas to move people from watchers to clickers? Keep reading to learn how.
Why YouTube for Traffic?
With an impressive three billion daily views, this video-sharing platform stakes its claim as the world’s second-largest search engine (behind Google) and is considered the third most-visited website in the world. Think YouTube is only for Justin Bieber fans? Think again.
As a marketer, there’s an absolutely incredible potential with YouTube if you deploy the right strategy. Imagine each of your videos as “mini websites.”
First, your content can get found from within YouTube itself.
Leverage YouTube's three billion daily views to get found quicker!
Then, your content has the potential to get indexed inside Google’s search engine results pages, embedded on blogs and shared across all of the social networking platforms!
Get even more exposure when your videos get ranked inside Google!
Building brand awareness and creating “celebrity status” are inevitable with the correct strategy, but at the end of the day, there is no “video bank” that you can trade in your views for dollars.
Instead, you need to strategically leverage your videos to perform one very specific function: drive traffic to your website.
Most people think viral video when they think YouTube. Until now, you’ve been under the impression that success on YouTube meant capturing some hilariously comedic moment with your cat or unsuspecting son or daughter on video and sharing it with the world.
You’ll quickly discover that you don’t need millions of views to get results. It’s all about the quality of your visitors, not the quantity.
Your YouTube videos will build rapport with your viewers, so that by the time they end up on your website, they are primed, pumped and ready to take action with you. In short, your conversion rates go up.
It’s my job to show you how to get your audience off of YouTube and onto your website, so they can start taking action with you. Let’s begin.
What’s Your Call to Action?
There are three ways to convert viewers into visitors. However, there’s truly only one strategy for effectively accomplishing this traffic-generation goal: a compelling call to action.
Each of your videos must tell your viewer exactly what to do (e.g., “go to my website”), how to do it (e.g., “click the link below”) and most importantly, why to do it (e.g., “get my free report on 7 Weight-Loss Secrets”).
Here's an example of a specific call to action.
Why should your audience leave YouTube and visit your website? The more compelling the offer, the more you can expect to convert video viewers into website visitors.
“Compelling” usually translates into “Free!” A free report, video, consultation or software application is enough to get people to take action with you.
However, as a savvy marketer, you also need to convey why this “free gift” is a must-have item that is worth getting immediately. What will your “free gift” do? How will it change prospects’ lives and make them better people?
Once you have crafted your compelling call to action, you’re ready to learn the three simple yet powerful ways to effortlessly get your YouTube audience over to your website.
Traffic-Getting Strategy #1: Tell People Exactly What to Do!
This is the easiest yet most often overlooked step.
At the end of each and every one of your videos, you need to specifically communicate your compelling call to action and tell people exactly how to get to your website (and the benefits of doing so!).
This step can be completed with a simple line or two of dialog: “Thank you for watching my video! To discover the seven secrets for successfully potty training your puppy, head on over to www.MyPuppyPottyTrainingSecrets.com to get your hands on this powerful, 3-part video series right now.”
Tell people what to do and why they need to do it, and they'll be compelled to take action with you!
Traffic-Getting Strategy #2: The Video Description Box
Every time you upload a new video on YouTube, you have the opportunity to add a description of the content. Most marketers never take advantage of this function.
To turn your video’s description box into a traffic-getting machine, here’s all you need to do: Add a 5-6 word call to action at the beginning with your complete website URL:
“Get More YouTube Traffic: http://www.JamesWedmore.com.”
This URL (don't forget the "http://") will become a clickable link that video viewers will easily see under your video.
Although this is a great start, I also recommend adding a paragraph or two of text to describe the content of your video. This way you can add your website URL again at the end of your description.
Traffic-Getting Strategy #3: The Call-to-Action Overlay
The third and final way to convert video viewers into highly targeted traffic is through a little-known YouTube feature called the Call-to-Action Overlay.
In essence, the Overlay is a simple banner ad that sits on the lower third of your video. You have full control over the copy, thumbnail image and the desired destination you want to send users to. This function takes a few minutes to set up, but failure to add it is simply leaving valuable traffic on the table. James: do you have a video or link that shows how to set this up?
The Overlay will appear as soon as the video begins to play and can be closed by the user.
To activate this little-known feature, you’ll need to start by signing up at ads.YouTube.com.
Get more views and exposure with YouTube Promoted Videos.
For a step-by-step tutorial showing you exactly how to install and activate the Call-to-Action Overlay function on all of your videos, watch the special training video below.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDi_qBg9cHg
Final Thoughts…
There are three ways that we can turn our videos into traffic-getting machines: a) Give a call to action in your videos, b) add a URL to your description box and c) add YouTube’s Call-to-Action Overlay function. These three tips can do wonders for increasing your traffic!
Make sure to add all three of these strategies to each of your videos, and remember: it all starts with a creating a compelling call to action! If you have something that people want, they will take the next step to work with you!
What do you think? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.
Read More10 Ways to Add Facebook Functionality to Your Website
Integrating Facebook into your website is an easy and free way to include a social dimension with the rest of your website business activity.
Facebook provides a selection of free plugins.
By the time you’re finished reading this article, you’ll understand your options for turning your website into a social hub and how to get started.
Why Facebook on Your Website?
Facebook has a grand vision: to connect the entire Internet, and every website on it, with a layer of social integration. The social network behemoth has been developing tools to assist in the spread of this vision since the introduction of the Open Graph in 2009.
Now, with over 10 social plugins available to the public (and free of charge!), website owners need to decide how best to utilize the available tools for their businesses. The first question you’re probably asking is: Do they even work?
Let’s look at some of the stats from SearchEngineLand:
- The average media site integrated with Facebook has seen a 300% increase in referral traffic.
- Users coming to NHL.com from Facebook spend 85% more time, read 90% more articles and watch 85% more videos than a non-connected user.
- Outdoor sporting goods retailer Giantnerd.com saw a 100% increase in revenue from Facebook within two weeks of adding the Like button.
The research to date has pointed to the fact that Facebook integration helps drive traffic to websites and pages, as users interact with sites and increase the “earned media” of a brand (in other words, the mentions and exposure of branded content that the company didn’t pay for—the authentic word-of-mouth).
To decide which plugins are right for your website, check out the descriptions of each plugin below, along with recommendations for types of sites it is best used with.
#1: Like Button
The Like button lets users share pages from your site back to their Facebook profile with one click. When the user clicks the Like button on your site, a story appears in the user’s friends’ news feed with a link back to your website.
The Facebook Like button is a great way to direct traffic to specific items on your site that otherwise would not have gotten the fanfare.
This is a great way to direct traffic to specific items on your site that otherwise would not have gotten the attention. For example, if you include a Like button on every page and object on your website, you might find that one user who enjoyed a page enough to click Like draws an entirely new audience of his friends to become aware of your brand where they otherwise wouldn’t have seen it.
This approach worked very well for American Eagle, which reportedly added the Like button next to every product on their site and found that Facebook-referred visitors spent an average of 57% more money than visitors who weren’t referred by Facebook.
#2: Send Button
The Send button allows your users to easily send your content to their friends. It’s different from the Like button in that the content sent between friends is communicated via a Facebook message and not, by default, through a public news feed posting as a “Liked” item would be. This button is great for content that might be better served individually.
The Send button is great for content that might be better served individually.
For example, if your business is a jewelry store, you should consider a Send button in addition to a Like button, just in case a website visitor is interested in sharing the page of a beautiful engagement ring he just stumbled across on your site with a specific few Facebook friends rather than his entire news feed (and ruin the surprise!).
#3: Comments
The Comments plugin lets users comment on any piece of content on your site. This plugin is especially handy for sites that are not built on top of a content management system (CMS) that already has comment threads built in.
For example, if your website only has product pages and no room for comments, and you’d like visitors to be able to leave comments on each page (or even only on some pages), the Comments plugin allows you this technical capability without having to build an entirely new comments solution for your web domain.
The Facebook Comments plugin is especially handy for sites that are not built on top of a content management system (CMS) that already has comment threads built in.
#4: Activity Feed
The Activity Feed plugin allows you to show users what their friends are doing on your site through Likes and Comments. This is basically a listing of the most recent activity people have undertaken on your website (provided, of course, that these people also happen to be Facebook friends with the visiting user looking at the feed).
The Activity Feed plugin shows users what their friends are doing on your site through Likes and Comments.
Unless your website is heavily trafficked with a user base that takes many actions (also tracked by Facebook Open Graph tags), there is not a lot of use for this plugin on your page.
#5: Recommendations
The Recommendations plugin lets you give users personalized suggestions for pages on your site they might like. These “personalized” recommendations are compiled automatically by the plugin, using information from the most common activity on your site.
When a user is logged into Facebook and viewing these recommendations, the plugin also takes into greater consideration activity undertaken by that user’s friends (even if the user’s friends made less-popular choices than what regularly occur on the site).
Recommendations is similarly useful to the Activity Feed—if your site is not getting high enough traffic to fill in the plugin’s box with consistently updating recommendations, it can seem like a stale information feed, doing more harm than good.
The Facebook Recommendations plugin gives users personalized suggestions for pages on your site they might like.
#6: Like Box
The Like box enables users to Like your Facebookpage and view its stream directly from your website. You can toggle the stream of your Facebook page on or off with this plugin as well, so you have the option of showing a more detailed look into the types of content users can expect to see from your page when they commit to becoming a fan by clicking “Like.”
If your Facebook page messaging stream is consistently updated with interesting content that would be engaging even if taken out of the Facebook environment, keep the stream in the box. If, however, you don’t update your page regularly and the stream is stale, omit it from the Like box settings, as you don’t want to turn off users visiting your website from becoming a fan of your brand based on a seemingly outdated or disengaging stream.
The Facebook "Like" box enables users to Like your Facebook page and view its stream directly from your website.
#7: Login Button
The Login button lets you show profile pictures of the user’s friends who have already signed up for your site in addition to a login button. This is only useful if you’re also going to add in a Registration function (below), which allows you to create a community of website users who are logged into your site (with their Facebook credentials).
When Facebook users login to your site with this plugin, they are also giving permission for your domain to access all the network-available personal information they’ve shared on Facebook, which allows your brand a greater understanding of the kind of users engaging with your website.
#8: Registration
The Registration plugin allows users to easily sign up for your website with their Facebook account. The registration process is simple for users, and generally includes input fields that are pre-filled with the users’ personal information if they are already logged into Facebook in another tab. This decreases the barrier to entry of signing up and becoming a user (and therefore a member of your community), because the pre-filled form takes one click to submit (whereas a typical account registration form has several blank fields to consider, plus that pesky process of creating a new login and password to remember!).
The Facebook Registration plugin is highly recommended to be included with any websites that require a login to participate, either in place of a traditional registration or in addition to conventional account signup options.
The Facebook Registration plugin is highly recommended to be included with any websites that require a login to participate, either in place of a traditional registration or in addition to conventional account signup options.
#9: Facepile
The Facepile plugin lets you display the Facebook profile pictures of users who have Liked your page or have signed up for your site. However, it only displays the pictures of a user’s friends (that the user is connected to on the network). It’s a visually appealing way to display the pictures of a user’s friends, especially coming in handy to surprise a visiting user when he suddenly sees his friend in an image on your site, realizing that his friend also likes the site.
The Facepile plugin displays the Facebook profile pictures of users who have Liked a page or have signed up for a site, but only if they are friends of the viewer.
If, however, the visiting user has few or even no friends who have Liked the page for your business, there are no pictures displayed. The Facepile plugin is appealing in that it can serve to entice visiting users who recognize a friend’s face in the pile to also click Like.
#10: Live Stream
The Live Stream plugin lets your users share activity and comments in real time as they interact during a live event. This plugin is similar to the Comments social plugin in that a visitor to your website can leave a comment on a page and also post that comment to his or her Facebook profile.
However, with the Live Stream plugin, visitors’ comments don’t remain permanently, and only the last 10 to 15 are displayed, depending on the height set for the plugin.
The Facebook Live Stream plugin is handy only if you anticipate hosting live events such as webinars, presentations, video viewings, etc.
Additionally, the moderator of the commentary (that’s you, the administrator of the website) cannot edit or remove comments (something you might want to do if comments are inappropriate). Instead, the administrator can ban users from the live feed.
This plugin is handy only if you anticipate hosting live events such as webinars, presentations, video viewings, etc. It should reside on the same page as the actual event, and need not be distributed on any extra pages.
Now that you know the best use cases for each social plugin, you can choose the integration(s) that are right for your site. When you do this, make sure to consider the amount of monthly traffic your site has been getting (and growing) month over month, to consider if some of the more recommendations-based plugins are right for you.
Note that the installation of each plugin involves technical implementation on the backend of your website (some demand greater technical depth than others), but Facebook has documented these details extensively to help you through the process.
What do you think? What social plugins do you already have on your website? Are you planning on adding any more? Leave us your questions and comments in the box below. We’d love to hear from you!
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Read More9 Tips for Optimizing Your Website for Mobile Users
Is your website meeting the needs of on-the-go mobile users?
When you’re developing your first mobile site, you may be at a loss. That’s understandable—a mobile website is an entirely different animal from a traditional website.
Given that, it’s important to keep some best practices in mind as you develop your mobile presence.
What follows are 9 best practices you can use to ensure your mobile site is as good as it can be.
About Mobile Users
But before we dive into the 9 best practices, it’s important to keep one thing in mind—the person viewing your site is mobile.
That may seem like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised by how many people forget that simple truth.
When someone is mobile, they’re expecting an entirely different experience from the one they’ll get on your standard website.
For example, a mobile visitor is typically looking for a few key pieces of information: directions to your office, a click-to-call phone number or a map of your store locations. What they’re not looking for are lengthy staff bios, information about your corporate philosophy or PDFs of your latest press releases.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at the 9 best practices for mobile website design that can help you create a site that puts your best foot forward.
#1: Simplify. Then Simplify Again. And Again
The first step in creating a mobile site is determining what content you’ll include. Given the restricted amount of screen space, it’s important to figure out what key pieces of information your visitors will probably be looking for.
A store locator? Probably. A “Contact Us” form with 13 different fields to fill out? Not so much.
It’s also important to keep the steps involved in going from entry point to purchase as simple as possible. Fandango does a great job of this by eliminating much of their non-essential content to quickly bring their consumers what they want: movie times.
Fandango does more than just provide a simple mobile web design—they provide a mobile ticket, too, thus completing the sales cycle.
Better still, Fandango completes the sales cycle by providing a QR code that acts as a mobile ticket for the purchaser. Just bring the phone to the theater and have them scan the code there—it acts as the purchaser’s ticket.
#2: Plan Your Site Layout
Mobile web pages will load slower than traditional web pages, so it’s important to keep the number of pages to a minimum. In addition, users won’t have the patience to click several pages deep on your site. Given that, it’s important to keep the site layout as streamlined as possible.
One technique I encourage people to use is to think like Steve Jobs. As you know, Jobs is famous for creating user experiences that are streamlined and intuitive. Put on your Steve Jobs hat to remind you to keep things as streamlined as possible. By doing so, your visitors will have a better experience when they’re on your site.
Domino’s must have been wearing their Steve Jobs hat when they developed their mobile site (and their brilliantly designed app). Instead of creating a cluttered site with confusing options, they simplified their site and limited it to the items people would most likely be searching for.
Domino's used the Steve Jobs approach to website development—it's an uncluttered site that provides limited navigation. Surprisingly, this minimalist approach improves the customer experience.
#3: Match the Branding Elements From Your Standard Site to Your Mobile Site
Even though your mobile site will be much more streamlined than your standard site, you’ll still want to incorporate the same branding elements on both sides of the equation.
This is important for two reasons. A mobile site is a brand touchpoint and, like any other property, should reflect and promote your brand essence. Also, for users who are already familiar with your company, a similar design will make them feel like they’re visiting an old friend, which is an important consideration for your most loyal customers.
Keep the color palette and the brand imagery consistent between your mobile site and your standard site.
The 60 Second Marketer site uses the same bright color palette and iconography in both the standard and mobile websites. The result is that a user who is familiar with the standard site will have a similar experience on the mobile site, too.
#4: Utilize White Space
When designing any website, it’s a natural tendency to cram in as much information as possible. But fight that urge. Not only does white space give a cleaner, more sophisticated appearance, it also ensures that users can easily click the button they’re aiming for.
This mobile site for MSNBC does a good job of keeping enough padding around all of the text to ensure that the user is able to accurately select the content he or she is looking for.
#5: Avoid Flash or Java
The obvious reason for avoiding Flash is that Apple products do not support Flash and have declared that they have no intention to do so in the future. Because iPhones make up about 30% of the smartphone market, a significant portion of your audience may not be able to access your content if you use Flash. Similarly, many phones do not support Java, and even if they do, using Java can be a huge drag on load time.
#6: Reduce the Amount of Text Entry Necessary
Do you suffer from fat-finger syndrome, which makes it difficult to use a smartphone keyboard
? Most of us have trouble typing on tiny keyboards. When possible, use dropdown menus, checklists and pre-populated fields as a means of data entry. This helps minimize the challenges people face when typing text into a smartphone.
Take a cue from FedEx’s mobile site. Even though a lot of information has to be entered into the site to accomplish the user’s goal, the use of checklists and dropdown menus cuts down on the amount of text a user must enter.
FedEx pre-populates text fields to make data entry easier for their visitors.
#7: Do Not Use Pop-Up Windows
Navigating between multiple tabs and browser windows is more difficult on mobile and can cause slow load times. If you need to open a new browser window, make sure you alert your user so that they know how to navigate back to the original page.
#8: Use Mobile Redirects
Once your site is designed and ready to go, make sure to put redirects in place that will sniff out when a visitor is using a mobile device and direct him or her to the mobile-optimized version of the site. For a more detailed description on how to do this, check out 5 Simple Steps to Getting Started With Mobile Marketing.
Once your redirects are in place, any mobile user who types in your web address or clicks on a link in a search engine will be sent to the mobile-optimized version of your site.
#9: Allow People to Visit the Full Site
You’ve worked hard on your mobile site. You want people to see it and you want people to love it. But the fact of the matter is, even if you’ve done a good job paring down your content, there will likely be someone who wants information you’ve chosen not to display.
As such, make sure you include links on multiple pages that allow the user to return to the full version of the site. You can see this feature on most mobile websites including USA Today, the Geek Squad, the Home Depot and Target.
Here the Geek Squad allows users to return to the main site at any point with a link at the bottom of the page.
Because mobile sites are a new landscape for most marketers, designing and building them can be a bit of a challenge. However, mobile sites also bring an awesome opportunity to showcase your brand and your creativity. As long as you keep the user’s needs top-of-mind, stay true to your brand and follow a few simple rules, you will have the hang of it in no time.
What are your thoughts? Have you created a mobile website for your business? What works and what doesn’t? Leave your comments in the box below.
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Read More5 Tips for Driving Facebook Fans to Your Website
Are your Facebook fans frequenting your website? Do you want them to?
Keep reading for five ways to drive traffic from Facebook to your company website.
Thoughts on Facebook
While Facebook has become an increasingly significant communication medium, for many businesses and organizations, their website remains the primary consumer touch point.
So what do you do if you want to get your Facebook audience to engage more on your brand site?
You could of course have everything on your Facebook page point back to your brand site, but you run the risk of alienating those people who want to consume content on Facebook.
Savvy marketers are using traditional and social channels to support one another.
So here are five suggestions for ways to drive traffic back to your brand website without undermining your presence on Facebook.
#1: Take advantage of tabs
There are many different ways to use tabs for the dual purposes of engaging fans in the Facebook channel and providing relevant links back to your website. A good example of this is Honda. When users first land on their page, they’re encouraged to Like the brand but can also easily click to the Honda site for more information about any of their vehicles.
On this landing tab, Honda provides users with an opportunity to explore their various vehicle models, linking to those vehicle pages on Facebook and back to the Honda.com site for more information.
As you create tabs for your page, think about how you can offer users utility on Facebook but without hosting all of your content on your Facebook page, especially when the content already exists on your website. Where appropriate, include links that drive users back to your site.
Remember that you can set any tab as the default landing tab for people who have not previously Liked your page. This way you can shape their initial interaction on your page to support your objectives both on and off of Facebook.
#2: Share articles or blog posts
If your company produces content that is hosted on your own website, be sure to post it to your wall.
Even if there is a high level of overlap between visitors to your website and your Facebook page, don’t assume that people are seeing every new piece of content on your website. Promoting articles and blog posts is an effective strategy because the content will be consumed on your site but can gain additional visibility through sharing, commenting and Liking on Facebook.
Media companies are major practitioners of this because they have produced a wealth of content, but you don’t have to be The New York Times to take advantage of this strategy.
The New York Times shares articles on Facebook.
Amnesty International USA does a good job on their page of posting updates from their website and blog. Many of these items have generated significant feedback on the page. At the same time, interested readers are driven back to the source, where they are encouraged to subscribe to a newsletter and donate to the organization.
It’s worth noting that in addition to posting stories to their wall, Amnesty International also features a separate tab dedicated to its blog. Posts are summarized on the tab, but full post content can be found only on the blog site.
On this tab, Amnesty International features news content that links back to their blog.
#3: Use teaser content
When you post an article (as in the previous example), you provide your fans with a clear picture of the content being shared. The post will contain a headline, photo and intro text. But in this case, I am suggesting you provide only a teaser to pique the user’s interest. Some might find this a bit sneaky, and it’s not something you want to do all the time, but it can be an effective way to entice a click.
Target does a good job of this on their page. As you can see in the example below, they have posed a question that is likely to generate interest and they have included a short URL so it’s not immediately clear where the link will take you. However, you have to be careful when using shortened URLs because some users may be apprehensive. In this case, Target has their own short URL so it can be a trusted source.
Target cleverly uses teaser content that is likely to generate a click back to their brand site.
#4: Run a contest on your brand site
Many companies are using contests to engage their fans on Facebook, but don’t forget that contests can also be a great tool to cross over to your brand site. Especially when your contest is more than a simple giveaway, you may find it easier to integrate your overall brand identity when the promotion lives outside of the confines of Facebook.
With the right platform you can run the contest on your brand site and still benefit from integration with Facebook and other social channels.
Here is an example from the airline WestJet. They’re strongly promoting the contest on their Facebook page, but all of the interaction takes place on a branded site where they have full control over the user experience.
WestJet asks fans to share about their last vacation to win vacation prizes.
#5: Special offers on your website
Whether you are an ecommerce site promoting a sale, a publisher providing access to exclusive content or a small business offering a coupon, you can selectively determine how you present offers on your website and through social channels.
It may seem obvious for a shopping site such as Gilt Groupe to promote special offers to its Facebook fans. But what Gilt does really well is balance the content that it shares on its wall so that it isn’t all about their sales.
They include conversational wall posts, photos and polls to keep their audience engaged and keep their page from being simply one big advertisement.
Facebook fans receive a preview of this special promotion available only on the Gilt site.
Another option to consider is providing your fans on Facebook with access to offers on your website before promoting to other channels. This will encourage people to stay engaged with your brand on Facebook, but ultimately you are able to drive them back to your site.
Managing multiple consumer touch points can certainly be a daunting task. As long as you have a clear sense of which channels best serve specific objectives, you can derive benefit from Facebook marketing without sacrificing the investment you’ve likely made in your website.
What do you think? What other strategies have you used to effectively bridge the gap from Facebook to your brand website? Leave your comments in the box below.
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