Because most people will spend no more time than that on your site, here’s what you can do to make every second count.

• Add basic contact information to your home page. Don’t make me “look” for you or make me fill out a form. I haven’t used forms for years and the spam is minimal.
• Keep your site content relevant and fresh: it’s a showcase not an archive.
• Review your site’s traffic patterns to find out which pages are most popular and make sure that your most popular pages tell your visitors:             
  1. who you are, what you do and what your competitive advantage is,
  2. why your brand is a better choice than the competition’s, and
  3. how they can start a relationship with you.

Consider this website behavior profile based on my review of more than 50 websites:

• About 25-50% of visitors arrived at the wrong place because they are not even close to your trading zone. They leave a few seconds after they arrive.
• Of those who looked around, about ½ view a 2^nd page.
  • So that’s about 25-37% of the initial “total page views”.

• 25-50% are repeat visits.
  • So on new visits you’re down to about 13-25% of “total page views”.

• About 50% of those visitors look at a 3^rd page on your site.
  • So less than 10% of all visitors that viewed three pages.

• Importantly only a small number of sites “held” readers interest for more than two minutes, and moved the retained audience to the “contact page” - typically the 5th or 6th page. Even then less than 10% of those who landed on the home page made it this far into the top sites.

• While most sites I reviewed had more than ten pages and some had over 50, most pages simply are not viewed. "Out of sight, out of mind" seems to apply to web-sites as well.

Summary:

While organic search scores can be improved with blogging, on line advertising, cross links, online PR, newsletters and social media (to help increase the marketing funnel diameter), “content” is still king.

If your content isn’t worth their time, they won’t stay.

I once knew a man who sold hotdogs. He had inherited the recipe from his parents, made each one by had and used to sell them on a busy street corner for 25¢ each. At the end of the day he took his earning home, paid his bills and reinvested the balance in his business.

Because people loved the man and his hotdogs, sales grew quickly. One day the man had saved up enough to build the restaurant of his dreams. It was located at the same corner where he sold his first hotdog 20 years ago. Now the man could sell his wonderful hotdogs all day, and all night long. To ensure he could sell all the hotdogs he produced, he advertised.

Everywhere. 

All the time. 

And people came from miles around to buy his hotdogs.

On the day the man’s oldest son left for college, the man who sold hotdogs stood in front of his beautiful restaurant and cried.

• He cried because he was happy.
• He cried because he was thankful for the hotdog recipe that his parent’s had given him; it had enabled his family to prosper.
• He cried because he was grateful for the long line-up of people that the advertising brought to his restaurant every day.

One spring morning six years later, the old man’s son returned from college, looked around, then sat his father down. He explained to his father that there was a war on, that people were not spending money the way they used to, and that the recession, which was projected to follow, promised hard times for almost everyone. His son told him to stop wasting his hard-earned money on advertising.

No more TV, newspaper, radio or outdoor billboard ads.

And no more big search lights on the roof all night long. O.K. Dad?

All that shit has to stop right now.

The old man thought; “My Son must be right. He just came back from college where he studied business, marketing and economics for six years. What do I know? I’m just an old man that loves to sell hotdogs.”

That night the big rooftop searchlight was turned off for the first time in 20 years. 

The next day all of the advertising contracts were cancelled.

And the next week sales fell for the first time in 30 years.

Each night when the man who sold hotdogs went to bed he thanked God for his many, many blessings;  especially for the safe return of his son and his amazing business foresight.

The Harry Rosen brand is over sixty years old now. Because it served my father’s generation so well it now serves my generation as well as two younger generations of customers as well. Harry Rosen has rightfully earned gobs of valuable brand equity in the Toronto area with their reputation for superior apparel and service. This is a smart little brand that has its shit together.

But now this.

A really dumb banner above their entrance that really says: "we're under new, stupid and inexperienced (brand and ad agency) management".

While the message is all wrong I bet the price was perfect.

HINT: when you’re working with intergenerational brands, you need to review the brand's design and copy across all relevant generations – as though you're working with different languages. In this case what may be considered profound to a younger generation is bullshit to an older one.

My dog Charlie could be a real prima donna at times. Charlie was pretty happy with the stuff we found along the way, but he wasn't immune to bling. There was a guy in one of the parks we used to go to. He liked to buy his Setter the cheap + chearful squeeky balls, boomerangs and other toys that are available at the local dollar stores. When Charlie saw them he dropped what he had and chased after the Setter's blingy toy-de-jour. Worst of all - whe he finally got it, Charlie would chew it up on no time while the Setter and his owner looked on in disgust or frustration.

I'll let you decide if there's a lesson here.

My take-away is this: display your bling at your peril because you might just loose it - which is O.K. as long as you're not too attached to it.

One of my Gurus taught me that it's O.K. to desire the good things in life so long as you don't covet them and become attached to them.

Kind of like now: those who sweat the losses in the stock market are worse off than those who embrace the rise and fall of the market and enjoy, rather than worry about, the ride.

Recently I went to the washroom at my local Honda dealership and was intrigued by the floor under the urinal. While I’m very accustomed to seeing urine on the floor below and beside the urinal because many men can’t or won’t aim – and also used to the smell, this solution is a first.

It makes me wonder in a few ways:

1.  How frustrated did the business owner get and for how long before resorting to this (rather expensive solution)? Note: Below the grate there’s a drain so-that the urine that drips onto the grate and the pan below can be rinsed away easily.

2.  Does the grate encourage men to be more considerate and aim, or more indifferent – and just piss on the floor?

3.  In marketing, and life, all we say and do helps people form a more positive or more negative opinion of us. What does the need for this kind of drastic urinal hygiene solution say about this Honda Dealership’s owner, staff and patrons?