I was reading an article published on www.AIGA.org recently called Ever Notice? – A dialogue between Steve Portigal and Dan Soltzberg about the importance of being aware and the advantages of tapping into your “super-noticing power” in practicing design and specifically in user research. It reminded me of my days as a student of graphic design and the noticing exercises we practiced. I still employ the same noticing tactics today but I had forgotten how important this fundamental principal is to marketing and visual communications.

In the field of online marketing the act of noticing goes into hyperdrive. Information across the World Wide Web is experienced differently than driving down a road, walking through a museum or reading the morning newspaper. A loading web page is an onslaught of text and images battling for attention. Web surfers consume hundreds of lines of source code and decide which data they like/dislike or need/don’t need in a split second. Quantitative and qualitative analytics gives us insight to surfing habits, tracks our goal conversions and referring links but the power of noticing contributes to our ability to respond, adapt and deliver.

It all begins with the fundamental art of noticing that Portigal and Soltzberg discuss. Soltzberg says “There’s another classic Zen concept that everything you need to know and experience is already happening and present, but you need to get your old ways of thinking out of the way so you can experience it. Doing contextual research is like using “super-noticing power” to peel back those layers of preconception, culture and habit. When you do that you get to something fundamental and then you’ve got a really solid platform for developing new concepts.”

Maybe you have never really consciously exercised “noticing power” or maybe you have forgotten how important it is. Try some of the noticing exercises mentioned in Portigal and Soltzberg’s discussion. You will be surprised to realize how many things you are actually experiencing but not really noticing.

A company blog is an important piece of your internet marketing strategy.  Engaging your customers in real conversations allows you to become a valuable resource that can fill a need, instead of focusing solely on the hard-sell.

Here’s a list of 29 benefits you should consider for using a blog on your business’ website:

1. Build an active community around your company & products (subscribers, comments, etc.)
2. Easily generate new content, quickly
3. Search Engine (SEO) benefits from the additional content
4. Humanize your business
5. Create more inbound links to your fresh content
6. Promote your brand
7. Direct communication to your clients & potential customers
8. Reputation Management tool allowing you to respond to any negative comments and address criticism directly
9. Inspire others to use your product/service through real stories of helping your clients succeed
10. Great public relations tool that the media can reference in their articles & reports
11. Become an industry expert & resource
12. Supports & integrates with all of your company’s marketing initiatives
13. Gives your visitors a reason to return to your site
14. Introduce clients & potential customers to your new products and/or services
15. Encourage ‘Word of mouth’ advertising in the online world
16. Network with others in your industry
17. Educate your customer about you, your company and your products / services
18. Evaluate your customers’ opinion of your company / product
19. Earn credibility by sharing your challenges & solutions
20. Increase Search Engine visibility easily by creating a wider variety of content
21. Allow your colleagues to contribute content without technical limitations
22. Blogging is fun
23. Communicate in a more casual/candid way
24. A great recruiting tool
25. A crisis management tool
26. Encourage interactivity within your organization
27. Respond quickly to current events
28. Another excuse to fill your meetings with buzzwords… “Blog”
29. Impress your neighbors

If you declare your website complete when the design and content is approved and published, you are wasting an opportunity to grow your business.  A website is only one piece of the broader internet marketing strategy that successful companies like Papa John’s understand.

“It took us seven years to reach our first billion in online sales, and at our current pace and growth rate it will take us less than three years to hit our next billion” — Jim Ensign, VP of Marketing at Papa John’s.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/biztech/05/08/papa.johns.ap/

The Pizza industry is a great example of a business model that may never have felt the pains of ignoring online ordering.  Their business would have continued as it had pre-2001 — taking phone orders and profiting.  Instead, they took the leap; taking online orders, purchasing hardware for all their locations and dealing with all the unknowns that this system must have introduced.  In 2007, Papa John’s reportedly received $400 million in pizza orders via their online ordering system.

Their business model wasn’t broken, they simply chose to use their website to grow their business, improve customer loyalty and make more money.

Does this situation sound like your website?

We recently redesigned our website and it’s still not bringing in any new business. What should we do?

Having a well designed website to promote your business online is not the finish-line, it just gets your business in the race. Set some meaningful goals and put together a plan of action to reach them.

Your Internet marketing strategy should at a minimum include plans for the following :

• Generating traffic to your new website
• Tracking what visitors actually do on your site
• Fixing the leaks in your site’s sales pitch (from analyzing your visitors’ actions & intent)
• Building customer loyalty & giving visitors a reason to be a return customer
• Supporting website inquiries, orders, content updates, etc.

Take your web presence seriously. Just having a website without a game plan means missing out on the potential revenue that dominating others in your industry could bring.