Contextual Technology
In the perfect advertising world: every visitor to a website is looking to buy a product; understands exactly what they want; knows the specific industry phrase to use when searching for the desired product; and wants to buy it immediately. Unfortunately we don't live in the perfect advertising world. Every visitor is unique. The closest we can come to addressing their specific needs, is to guess what most visitors want, when they behave the same way that other similar visitors have in the past. The key is to provide each visitor the opportunity to behave in a way that will provide the greatest number of successful purchases for the advertiser.
Data Algorithms
Algorithms are very useful. They are prepackaged logic that utilize experience from interacting with visitors, to achieve the ultimate outcome - a conversion for the advertiser. Without algorithms, every visitor would have to be treated the same, with highly unpredictable outcomes. The success or failure of algorithms is dependent on a number of factors: segmentation of the visitor group, optimization of the website structure, specificity of the content utilized, and most importantly matching a visitor’s intent (needs) with the commercial opportunities (links, ads, widgets) provided.
Philosophy: Don't make the visitor think. The style, structure, content, and buying opportunities all help the visitor believe they are exactly where they should be, and that the experience will lead to achieving what they expect.
Segmentation & Targeting
The granularity of visitor segmentation is a major factor of how visitors are converted into sales. Many domain service companies treat all visitors exactly the same. Domain Advertising believes that providing the best possible content to each visitor based on what their expected needs, frame of mind, position in the buying cycle, industry category, nationality, language, browser, bandwidth capacity, and many other factors is essential. A visitor that is searching to find a car is not going to behave the same way that someone looking for an environmental group to join would. Micro vistor groups are targeted with specific style, structure, content, and commercial opportunities that ensure optimum conversion and visitor experience.
Style
Style strongly influences the way that a visitor feels when navigating through a website. The colors need to reflect the subject. Sailing websites would better utilize blue, white, and green; whereas a car racing website may find it better to use black, red, and orange. Fonts are specific to the subject, and bullet points need to feel relevant as well. Backgrounds could be plain, textured or embossed.
Structure
The way a website is laid out gives the visitor cues on what to expect and how to behave. A website, like a magazine or newspaper, gives clear visual aids as to what is important to look at first, what the major themes are, and what they should click. Structure can also be used to give visitors a layered opportunity to view and select links or content based on targeting. Simply put - structure tells the visitor where to look first, second, and third to take action.
Content
When a visitor gets to a website, subconsciously, the first question they ask themselves is, "Am I in the right place for what I am looking for?". The strongest visual cues that direct the visitor are images, title text, and the style of the website. If the images of the website are not contextually specific , the visitor will not be convinced to look futher and will just close the browser window. The quality of the images is also important. Domain Advertising only uses professional photography for its websites and handpicks every image.
Commercial Opportunities
Commercial opportunities are the web elements that are offered to the visitor to take action on. It's important not to distract the visitor with unnecessary information or content. The most relevant, and specific action items (links) to the visitors needs need to be the primary focus of the website, but if those needs aren't met the website needs to also offer alternatives. Alternatives could be more general options in the same contextual category, banners, widgets, or a search box.
