Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [109]
Aflac: Emphasizing Security
Knowing that Aflac was a supplemental insurance company, I was prepared for an emotional plea. However, when viewing the content of the website, I was even more enthralled to see the stories that are the focus of the content (Figure 10-9). The stories are the central focus of the content. Rather than relying on the typical corporate style of communication (“We have what you need; buy it!”), Aflac relies on the powerful emotional impact of people who are alive and have their health, home, and family because of their decision to purchase supplemental insurance.
Figure 10-9: Aflac’s focus is on people and their stories.
Sure, insurance companies have reputations for over-using the emotional plea, but Aflac’s approach brings in the logic and credibility factors of providing proof from a testimonial. You can’t tell the person who is giving the testimonial they are wrong, because they lived the experience that is their testimonial. By providing these pictures and stories, the site makes an impact.
Wednesday: Communicate Credibility
Establishing a credible identity is completely dependent upon the presentation of a website and content used to persuade. No amount of well-written content will save a poorly designed website. Neither will a well-designed website persuade well, if there is no emphasis on providing compelling, persuasive content. The two are interdependent upon each other. Poor site design alone can cause people to question credibility. A professional presentation is critical to online business success. A pleasing design, arrangement of content, and clear reading presentation will make a website stand above others. (For more on this, refer to Stanford University’s “Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility” at www.webcredibility.org/guidelines.)
Even Strunk and White’s Elements of Style addresses the factor of credibility, because even the design of the content is an important factor:
Before beginning to compose something, gauge the nature and extent of the enterprise and work from a suitable design. Design informs even the simplest structure, whether of brick and steel or of prose.
In developing credibility, the website must be usable in the way that the visitor expects usability to work. If text looks like a link and it is not a link, then the visitor becomes frustrated, because the visual cue indicated that the text was “clickable.” By reducing the perceived functionality of the website, credibility suffers.
The following are a few examples of how websites create credibility through the presentation of the content. It is remarkable how the same content can be perceived differently, simply based on the presentation. However, there are consistent factors in creating the credible presentation of content, as the following case studies show.
Online News: Critical Credibility
Of websites that need to communicate credibility, news organizations are near the top of the list. Built on decades of creating that same sense of credibility in print, the media have now shifted to meeting the needs of an online audience.
When evaluating the top news websites online, one realizes that there is very little “design” in these websites. The focus is on the layout, typography, font size, and color scheme in order to present the information in a credible and understandable manner.
In evaluating the top news sites in Figure 10-10 (wjs.com, usatoday.com, cnn.com, foxnews.com, and nytimes.com) in the United States, a clear pattern of content arrangement and presentation emerges:
The most “designed” element is a thin header, which contains the logo, current weather, and date.
All content is presented as black text on a white background.
Primary headlines are black or dark blue.
Headings are ordered in terms of size.
Every time blue body text is used, it is a link.
Figure 10-10: Online news websites use the same content presentation and arrangement techniques, which are all credibility mechanisms.
This makes the content easy to scan and digest, and it makes