best practices

Putting audience focus into practice.

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Using navigation patterns in marketing and advertising
Let's say the key factors to use in navigation design for the market you're interested in include:

• These people are extremely visually oriented
• They tend to ignore or discard any information that isn't visually oriented
• They make decisions that focus their attention on the rewards and benefits they believe they will have
• They largely ignore references to past or present gains/pleasures/advances, often refusing to make a decision if this is the only type of information presented.

Item-for-item design considerations are:

1. Every decision point and action item should have a graphic of some kind-- not text but an image.
2. Important information and places where you want the prospect to focus their attention should have a unique coloring -- such as haloing or shading -- in order to slow the eye long enough for the mind to capture and internalize the information being presented.
3. "Next step" items should be located on the right of the screen.
4. Don't spend time developing content that deals with past or current experience with a product or service, nor with comparisons to their existing situation. A car ad for this audience, for example, should emphasize the fun, safety, enjoyment and other positive experiences the prospect will have when driving this car.

The summary web design element -- again for a car -- would be "Have an image of a member of your target audience either in or next to their car, visibly smiling, probably smiling at or with members of their peer group. Place this image on the right of the screen and halo it. Any text leading to this image should be visually distinct from the rest of the page and direct the prospect to a decision or next step. The image itself should be part of the next step's action item."

This is for one market segment's navigation style, and navigation styles change over time, so businesses need to keep up. You can see a simple listing of key factors to use in navigation design here. The full super-rhythms and navigation styles can contain more than 10 distinct elements and are as rich, vibrant and exciting as the people represented by them.

And that's how to get visitors in focus in general and GeoFocusing in particular. I hope this has been helpful. Regular readers know I encourage them to contact me with questions, so please do and I'll do my best to respond or put you in touch with someone who will.

Joseph Carrabis is CRO and founder of NextStage Evolution and NextStage Global, and founder of KnowledgeNH and NH Business Development Network. Read full bio.