A good website will act like a good radio station. Radio stations want you to listen, know who you listen to (for ratings, which are based on listener RECALL of who they listened to), come back for more, and buy sponsors products or services. A good website, properly optimized, will be visited, bookmarked or remembered, and will prompt you to buy their own or advertisers product or services. Both try to move you to a desired action. A harsh radio rating fact of life is that many stations are statistically equal, mired in the midpack of ratings, no matter what they do or try to entice listeners. A harsh website fact is that most sites dont make it into the search engine-delivered rankings, or if they do, are so far down the list, people dont dig that deep. (Have you ever dug into the 165th Google find for example?) Radio stations try to get you to come back with features like the 8 or 9 oclock all music/commercial free hour, and another as you drive home, or contests, countdowns, specials, etc. Good websites utilize optimization to boost their audience, and then have good viewer-friendly website construction to motivate and move a browsing potential customer into a return visit (fresh content, expert status, newsletter, rss feed, etc.) and action (special offer, discount, bundle, etc.) High performing (music) radio stations know that their own promos are really heard as interruptions from the music that is the magnet that draws most listeners, that they are commercials for the radio station, and are heard as commercials. They make them short and to the point. High performing websites know that flash intros or heavy graphic content can eat bandwidth, slow loading, and lose impatient viewers who, after all, are there to have a need met to find information, usually. High performance radio stations on a crowded dial specialize in a clearly communicated benefit. High performance websites know theirs is an even more crowded world, and they NICHE, specializing in a clearly (enticingly title tagged) communicated benefit. |
