Here at MashLogic Mansion we love Christmas, it’s our favorite time of the year. The office smells of mulled wine and fresh mince pies, the festive lights are sparkling and beautifully wrapped presents nestle under our gigantic tree. Everyone’s excited to see what he or she is getting this year.
We all have a wish list. Ranjit wants a couple of engineers. Our CEO wants more customers and everyone wants a new website. However one particular present did catch my eye. Lavishly wrapped and twice the size of the other, the gift tag on it says “To All Our Publisher Partners”.
Actually I do know what’s in this one, it’s the MashLogic Publisher Tool Kit stuffed full of the kind of goodies that our partners love to receive. It’s absolutely “the gift that keeps giving”.
The tool kit contains two main elements, “2Go” & “2Stay” and both provide Publishers with the ability to drive greater User time on site, increase the number of page views per visit by Users, capture new Users and drive incremental revenue.
“But John, that’s just too good a gift to be true” I hear you exclaim and while you may think that, we at MashLogic believe that access to free tools that benefit your business is everyone’s right and not a privilege granted once a year by a overly generous Aunt or doting Grandparent.
After all, if you are a Publisher you more than likely spend vast amounts of money building a great looking site; you then hire the best writers and photographers to produce fabulous content and top off the process by committing time and money capturing & retaining Users. My friends in the web ops business who know tell me that this process can be likened to standing in a freezing cold shower ripping up $100 bills. That may be an over-dramatic comparison but I do know enough to be dangerous and know that it’s a constant battle to win, keep and grow a loyal User base.
So this Christmas our gift to Publishers is a carefully crafted tool set that intuitively matches a Users interests to additional, contextually relevant content taken from other areas of their site, their sites archive or from within a network of affiliated sites managed by the Publisher. The net result being that Users see more of what they like and are far more likely to stay connected to their favorite brands.
Now before I say it, I know the next bit will annoy somebody out there but here goes: Users are essentially lazy. I say this with respect but also with the belief that Users would rather be offered more of what interest them (preferably from your site) than have to use the search box or even worse for a Publisher, type in a competitors web address and navigate away.
Present the User with one click access to additional, contextually relevant URL’s in a natural and fully integrated way and the likelihood that they will stay with you for longer and view more pages is greatly increased.
Think of it this way. It’s Christmas Day morning. You’ve got loads of good things for everyone and everything is the way you want it to be. You wake up early, full of anticipation. You quickly dress, wake the family, run downstairs and gather around the tree.
Instead of opening all their gifts, you only allow your guests to open just one and after they’ve seen what it is you let them leave and visit someone else’s house to open the presents they’ve got them. If they knew what else you had in store for them they’d probably have stayed all day!
Bah humbug!
