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Have you come across the Ms Dewey search engine yet?

This is a site that’s been getting a lot of traffic and attention. At least according to Alexa.

They’ve made good use of video and a chroma key background, to capture your attention and curiosity.

It’s quite addictive, because you want to know what she is going to say or do next.

It looks like they are just making money from pay per click listings. But I’ve seen similar online videos used to get people to sign up to a list, click on a link etc.

It’s definitely gimmicky, but I thought this might give you one or two ideas ;-)

http://www.msdewey.com

Jason Lewis

Last week I shared a fun site with you, that could somehow read your mind. I explained how I thought they’d done a great job in creating something that would be very ‘viral’, and draw lots of traffic to their site. However, I also pointed out that they are doing a very bad job of converting that traffic into paying customers.

Well this time I want to show you a very cool, buzzworthy, and controversial website, that is not just set up to bring in a ton of viral traffic. The whole marketing process is very cleverly put together, with one thing in mind…to sell the end product: a Philips Norelco BG2020 Men’s Bodygroom Shaver.

• They get your attention immediately when the guy starts walking onto the screen in his bathrobe.
• They keep your attention very well and demonstrate the benefits of the product in a fun way.
• They have used flash technology to make the page interactive, by placing certain hot spots for you to click on. This helps make the site sticky, and keeps the visitor on the site for longer. I’d love to see the stats on which circle gets clicked on first/the most. ;-)
• They don’t rely on you being able to find your way around the site yourself. When the guy stops talking, they guide your eye to click on the main menu link and learn more about the product.
• There’s an effective ‘tell a friend’ option at the bottom of the screen. This makes it easy for people to spread the word and tell their friends.
• Then there’s that all important ‘buy now’ link, which provides with a choice of 3 online retailers to make your purchase with.

What They Could Improve On…

If I have one criticism it’s that the call to buy action is a little weak. The whole site does do a great job of pre-selling the shaver, and they have a ‘buy now’ link for you to go on and purchase.

However, I think they should make the buy now link a bit more prominent. I’m sure there must be people who leave the site to go and see where they can buy the shaver, because they didn’t spot the ‘buy now’ button on the site. That might not seem like a big deal, but many of them will get distracted by something else along the way, or not be able to find the shaver for sale…leading to lost potential sales.

I would run a test with it in a slightly more visible color, to see if it gets more clicks. I suspect they’ve left it like that because they want the rest of the site to finish the job of pre-selling, and don’t want the order button to jump out and be a distraction too early on.

If that is the case, they could use some sort of timeline to change the color of the buy now button, once the main presentation has been viewed. That would suit both purposes.

When you click on the product features from the main menu, you scroll through the features in a popup window. They should incorporate a buy now link in that features window. I think if someone has gone as far as viewing that, it’s time to give them an option to buy, and they miss that opportunity.

Controversial, funny, attention grabbing, and some good marketing…

See it for yourself here: http://www.shaveeverywhere.com

I’ve got a broadband connection so the page loaded instantly for me. If you are on a slower dial up connection, you may need to wait a little while for the page to load, but it’ll be worth the wait to see it.

Post your comments and tell me what you think.

Jason Lewis

P.S. Check out all the links in the main menu - the third testimonial made me laugh out loud :-)

Here’s a fun site you might find interesting:

http://www.milaadesign.com/number.html

The first few times I did it, I’ll admit that it did freak me out. I just couldn’t work out how a stupid web page could read my mind!

It’s cool idea for getting viral traffic. The main site is for a flash design company, so the web page was obviously set up to show off their ability.

They’ve done a great job with the design work, but I think they could be doing a lot more to get new business, out of the all the viral traffic they must be getting.

There’s just a small logo with a link to the home page, but that’s not enough in my book.

What do you think?

Jason Lewis

P.S. If after playing the game you can’t figure out how it can read your mind, and you want to know…check out the comments link below this post. All will be reavealed ;-)