Meine Freunde, the web is a big sinkhole of the horrible (must be spoken with French accent, especially the German part). This is not news to you but we’ve become rather inured to it all. There is a solution for bad websites. It’s to make them more webular. Webularity is the quality of design and writing that characterizes those websites that help users answer questions and solve problems. In other words, your website’s value to your customer. There are many ways to create this value but it always start with the audience. This is hard, I know. It’s one of those things that few of us like to think about. It’s like trying to figure out the opposite sex, or even the same sex if you’re trying to have a relationship. But the reward is commensurate with the effort put in to understand them. Understanding an audience can begin with thinking about why you started your company or why your employer exists. It’s always about solving a problem. They don’t have to be this obscure: Let’s examine what problem solving is all about. Think about your own behavior on the web. When you do a search, you’re essentially looking for information or a product to solve a problem. Even when you’re looking for something funny to Tweet, you’re in a problem-solving mood. You’re goal-oriented. The same is true with anyone coming to your website. Problem solving When you conduct a search, you follow pretty predictable behavior, even if you’re a pretty unpredictable person. Google and Bing know this quite well. It’s not just the search algorithm looking for patterns. It’s search algorithms based on billions and billions of tracked behaviors and an understanding of how people conduct searches. In my book, I tell writers over and over to observe their own web behavior and buying behavior. Doing this will tell you a lot about human nature and will give you clues to how your commercial audience behaves. There are so many ways to search for something using words in a browser window. Let’s search for information about a vacation to India. travel to india traveling to india travel india travelling to india traveling india travel to india from usa immunizations for travel to india travel agents to india cdc travel india travel to india shots travel to india visa vaccines for travel to india cheap travel to india travel visa india travel agent india travels to india travel agency india That is just a small sample of things a potential visitor to India might type into Google or Bing. If you examine them closely, you see different intentions. Someone...
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