Iowa City

Posts Tagged ‘market’

I have never yet seen (or heard of) a plane reversing into a mountain, which is why I believe the first class compartment should be at the back. If you are going to pay all that money, shouldn’t you get the safest as well as the best seats?

This is one of the many, many things airlines get wrong. For the consumer, commercial flight is now one of the biggest gaps between what it could be, and what it is, in business today led by the arrogance of the major airlines who offer a ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ approach to the market. They are big companies thinking like big companies. The icons of a supply side mentality.

It doesn’t have to be this way, of course, and there are a few exceptions appearing on the radar screen that might lead the whole industry into a different way of thinking. Both the following are true stories, and indicate a difference in approach that might have profound implications for the future of the industry.

The heavier your design, the longer it will take to load in the end user’s browser. In some cases heavy, image-intensive designs work wonders, but in most cases this is going to cause problems. Internet users have a relatively low attention span, so you have only a few seconds to capture their attention.
If your homepage is still trying to load after 60 seconds, forget it; your potential customer gave up 54 seconds ago. A good designer thinks about how the site will perform once it has been coded and takes this into consideration when creating a site design.

The design for a Web site must help portray the experience. If a beach is an important draw for an area, then the accompanying Web site will want to do more than just show a sub-par picture of an empty beach. The site should have a high-quality shot of that beach on a hot summer day that includes members of their target market enjoying themselves in order to give people an experience they can relate to and build the desire to participate.

Did you know that around 10 percent of the general population are red green color blind? If you are designing a Web site playing off of these two colors, many people might not be able to differentiate between the colors.

Many businesses have developed corporate policies and procedures around blogs. Employees need to know if they are allowed to mention your corporation in their blogs. They should be provided with what is acceptable and what isn’t, and if they are allowed to include any corporate reference in their blog.

Many businesses have assigned a person in their marketing department the responsibility of monitoring the blogs for mention of the company. They have policies and procedures in place for their reaction when they find their company mentioned. If it’s good news, they want to capitalize on the mention
by getting as many links to it as possible and getting the “right” people to see it. If it’s bad news, they need to have procedures in place to minimize the damage.

Blogs provide a plethora of information related to target market research. You can find out what present and potential customers think about your products or services, your advertising campaigns, your advertising slogans, or their preferences related to style, color, or features.