Give Your Site A Vegas Make Over

By Andy Brocklehurst
Posted Monday, September 27, 2004

I don't watch too much TV these days, but now and again a program catches my eye.

Recently it was a program on Discovery Channel about Casinos.

I learnt a bunch of marketing tips from that one hour show even though I set out to watch it simply for my own entertainment.

What hit me the strongest was when they were talking about the design of slot machines. Those machines sit there and seemingly flash their lights in a random pattern and have a few cliché catch phrases printed on them - but the design of a slot machine is a BIG job.

Every aspect of the design is carefully thought through from the color scheme to the positioning of 'headlines', the patterns of the flashing lights and the wording used on the screen printed panels.

It's all one big combination of marketing and psychology. Certain colors are known to work best and represent certain emotions, the tunes the machines play are all in the key of C - because it's been proven to work the best. The words that are used like "win-o-matic" are all time-tested 'power' words that are known to draw people to that machine.

Even the symbols used are carefully chosen, and many work better in some regions than others. In America the number '7' is used on the reels, in other countries '8' is considered to be more 'lucky' by the users of slot machines and so that is used instead.

WHAT SHOULD WE LEARN FROM THIS?

Have you stopped to consider what works best from a web design point of view?

Color scheme for example plays a big part in the success of your site. Different colors represent different emotions. For instance, it's no mistake that my site uses Black and Blue a lot. If you want to know why I chose them, and for that matter what colors you should try.

When you write text you should think carefully about the words you choose. Again, there's a members report that covers 'Power Words and phrases' - words that are time-tested and known to help in the sales process.

Above all, consider for a moment HOW the Vegas marketing experts came to know what works and what doesn't.

TESTING

You'll notice slight changes to my site from time to time - why is this?
Because I am always testing. Working out if one format works better than another. Getting people to your web site is only half the battle - keeping them there long enough and getting them to come back time and time again is the other half.

So give your site the Vegas once over and keep testing, testing, testing.

About the Author
Discover the tricks Andy uses to promote build and run his
web businesses using free or almost free techniques.
(http://www.succeed4u.com/inner-room.pl)