As Sindi Lindberg of SindiwithanS, and I are gearing up for our Social Media Marketing Workshop 101Social Media Marketing Workshop 101, a workshop aimed at social media marketing for restaurants, taverns or, really, anyone involved in the food and beverage service industry, there are a lot of little details to attend to. Details though can sometimes make a big difference, whether in a workshop or as part of your online marketing plan. This week I need to attend to a lot of those details so I thought that this week, to save me a little time, I would do a shorter blog about one detail. The details may seem small, otherwise they wouldn’t be called “detail” but they are often very important. The first detail is what is often called “Above the Line” or “Above the Fold.”
This terminology comes from newspapers when the important news was on the top of the first page “above the fold.” The same is true for your web site. When someone comes to any page on your website they usually only see the top half of the page. If you are long winded it may only be the top tenth of the page. Usually people will first look in the upper left hand corner, because that was how we were taught to read, then the upper right hand corner, then the center of the page. Unless the website visitor is utterly enchanted with your site and they are looking for more information most people will NOT scroll down thinking maybe there is something interesting on the page. We can be pretty sure that few people read the election results for the city council at the bottom of the newspaper President Truman is holding up.
Ask yourself: What do I want people to do on this web page? Sign up for the newsletter? Become friends on Facebook? Donate to my charity? Then put those calls to action on the top half of your web site, preferably in the upper left or right hand corners. Don’t make people search for those things you want them to do.
Our workshop is aimed at restaurants, taverns and similar businesses but all of these techniques are applicable to any business that is using the internet to attract visitors and customers. If you would like to know how Image Media Partners can help sign up for a free analysis of your website.
Photo Credit: mbell1975 flickr creative commons
