MSN PPC Advertising Behavioral and Demographic Targeting: Killer App. or Achilles Heel?

Examination of the shortcomings of the web content design of many enormous consumer corporations.

When you think of the most successful companies in the world, what names come to mind? Most likely, consumer-oriented giants such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Sheraton, Disney, IBM, General Electric and IBM. They have not just spent billions on advertising to buy their way into your head. They offer convenient products and services that they have made it a part of your life.

But if you thinkthe most successful Web sites, what names come to mind? Names like Google, Yahoo! Amazon, AOL, Kazaa (for better or worse), and Hotmail.

The late-1990s mantra about the web is a revolutionary technology that would destroy traditional companies may have been exaggerated. But a decade and a half into life on the net, it is clear that the world's leading companies have been pushed to the edge of the Internet.

The biggest shopping site is not walmart.com but amazon.com. The largest map page isbut not randmcnally.com mapquest.com.

Established companies have usually only been able to buy their way into this market through acquisitions (as with the purchase of Microsoft's Hotmail, which it as a base for creating MSN).

Why, with few exceptions, the world's most successful Web sites were not created by the most successful companies in the world to life?
Many web-name Big Companies' Sites a large Waste of Time for Visitors

The McDonald's web site talks about food, but has noReal-time menu. The Coca-Cola USA web site has no clear ingredients list or nutritional information, no recipes for floats or mixed drinks, no company history, and nothing else useful for people who like Coca-Cola. All this information has been inexplicably located on the "company" page, which on any other site for investor relations used. The Johnson & Johnson website offers useful information, so you can access it when the author tries to open it, it crashed two different web browsers(Internet Explorer and Mozilla) before finally yielding (to the Opera browser).

Many big names web sites offer lessons in the company, not what to do in web design. The main lesson is far to cool to sacrifice usability in an attempt to, and never forget why the user came to your site in the first place. McDonald's is the world's largest restaurant chain, but it was spared because of his website.
Why Big-Budget Websites are more than bombsBlockbuster

The Web sites of many successful businesses (both B2C and B2B) are like big-budget Hollywood movies that spend millions of stars and special effects, and one quarter of one percent of the budget for the script. Worse still, are the special effects of blockbuster web sites much more annoying than impressive.

Special Effect that Bombs Number 1: Flash!

If the web pages do not provide all the relevant information content to read what they stand instead? SpinningCoca-Cola bottles. Chicken McNuggets and French fries to shrink, that if your cursor over them. Changing pictures of generic search office buildings and men in suits (on the website of real estate giant CB Richard Ellis, but that essentially describes the general appearance of many corporate websites).

Of course Flash can be used as a way of content words, both in print and can be presented, recorded, and pictures that actually illustrate something. But mostly it is for. impress And usually it ends annoying. Who wants to spend even the bulk of one minute wait for a turn of generic pictures of smiling models?

Special Effect that Bombs Number 2: Splash Screens

They give information on expected duracell.com batteries, which can be found if the patient is not to "hit back" button while the page a picture of a battery revolving painfully slowly shows. At http://www. Mcdonalds. Com fills you with imageshappy children playing with Ronald McDonald and select a menu from which country you are coming from. Johnson and Johnson's Web site shows a logo before automatically redirecting to the main page, that is, if it does not crash your browser first (which happens when the author tries to side on the 2nd May 2004, access).

Another way to Web sites of major companies consumers Schick to Mercedes-Benz to Thomas Cook your time with splash pages is by clicking to choose which country youVisit. This would have automatically recognized, or at least, useful worldwide content could put on the home page, select an option on a country clearly visible.

Splash pages are the internet equivalent of making patrons in line out front before they are waiting inside. Unless a site belongs to a nightclub or a professional services firm with too much business, you can not that be a good idea. On the Web, where the "Back" button and the URL bars loomtempting to make people wait is business suicide.

Special Effect that Bombs Number 3: overbuilt or poorly constructed "Dynamic" Functionality

Every web surfer has a story about a shopping cart that a malfunction only if they are now to "purchase" on something they really wanted. Or a detailed form that lost all data after the "submit has been pressed" button. If there are so many good "dynamic" sites, why are there still so many badwhat? Part of the problem may be unnecessary custom design and redevelopment. There are already excellent Open Source databases exist, which can be endlessly customized and updated by a qualified designer. Yet many companies prefer to spend their money reinventing the wheel, so that they can their own proprietary technology, even if it does not work.

Sometimes, dynamic content can distort the way an entire site presents itself. If the dynamic content is so complex that it presents problemsFor many users, it is unlikely the dynamic content is worth it. On disney.com, your first greeting to a message that your computer is-enough up-to-date (or not treat) to the ground. Is that really the magical and fun impression you want to give the visitors?

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