Useful Advices - Internet and Businesses Online

Websites are a quick and relatively easy and cheap method of reaching thousands of potential customers.

But web visitors are becoming increasingly more savvy, and very few websites today live up to their potential.

Sure, you can be very successful in attracting web traffic to your site, but inspiring visitors to order from your site or to come back for more is something else.

Th

According to USFDA, a combination product is one composed of any combination of a drug and device; biological product and device; drug and biological product

e quality of your website can either results in a thriving e- business – or nose-dive as quickly as a burst bubble.

If you are doing business on the Web, you can’t afford to ignore these 15 mistakes:

1. Gone in a flash – Some web developers think that adding a flash intro will give a site more credibility. Instead, Flash (a Macromedia program that shows mini- movies) merely delay

; or drug, device, and biological product and fixed dose combination would include two or more combinations of drug.

Examples of combination products may in

the site’s loading, and visitors are likely to get irritated and leave in seconds. You have but a matter of seconds to grab your visitors’ attention before they decide whether or not to stay – Flash doesn’t add anything positive to their experience and if they don’t have Flash installed on their website, they won’t see any fancy graphics.

2. Mixing up the media – Writing for the

lude drug-coated devices, drugs packaged with delivery devices in medical kits, and drugs and devices packaged separately but intended to be used together.

web is an entirely different ball game to writing for the web. So if you just upload your brochure to the web, it won’t work. When people read copy on a screen they do so a lot slower than if they were reading the same text in print. They read differently, too. Web visitors prefer to scan text as opposed to reading word for word, because the information is harder to digest. So you need to

here is enormous increase in the number of combination products entering the market in the recent years. Combination products have proven advantages but fixe

make good use of ‘scannable’ text, such as bulleted lists, emboldened key concepts and so on. Using hyperlinks will enable you to provide additional information to accommodate visitors who want to read more.

3. Mission impossible – It never ceases to amaze me how difficult it can be to find out the ‘face’ behind websites. Some sites make it impossible to figure out who or what the

d dose combinations are still in the process of convincing regulatory authority on their advantages over the single ingredient formulations.

Combination pro

host organisation is – others simply leave it out. Remember, there has to be an element of credibility and trust if web visitors are going to feel comfortable enough to make a purchase. Don’t make it hard to find out who you are, what you do and how to contact you – regardless of which page they are on. Make it as easy as possible for visitors to contact you – and reassure them that they

ucts have become life saving products for the pharmaceutical companies who doesn’t have many innovative molecules in their product pipeline and have been inc

can do business with you.

4. Not so vital statistics – Prospective customers won’t stay and buy just because they have landed on your site. You must grab their attention – fast – and then keep them interested enough to make the sale. They want to know what’s in it for them. Don’t start writing about where your business is based, its size and how long it’s been operating. This is t

easingly used in the product life cycle management. Even the companies having product patents are trying to extend their product life cycle through the combi

elling your visitors nothing about the benefits of buying what you offer. And it is likely to lose you sales, customers and hot leads. Web visitors are usually busy and impatient. They want to be fed the main point – and quickly. They don’t care about your company; they’d sooner find out how your offering can help them. So put your main marketing message at the top of your screen, and lea

nation products and maximize the revenues. But the companies involved in this practice are overlooking that they are burdening the patients both economically

e boring vital statistics such as company background details on other pages, not your first screen.

5. Gone in the blink of an eye – Once upon a time, at the dawn of the internet age, web designers littered their sites with eye candy such as scrolling marquees, blinking text, spinning text and counters. People thought they were novel. Today they are considered to be distracting to

and physically. They need to rightly judge the benefits of the combination products and they have to even look at the risks involved when combining the produ

the eye, and pretty annoying, actually. Besides, visitors really don’t care on jot about how many supposed hits your site has secured.

6. Design of the times – More and more websites are concentrating on putty pretty graphics before good content. I’ve been reading Nielsen's book Prioritizing Web Usability and he points out that we are finally getting over our lust for pretty site

ts. Some of the combination products were well accepted by physicians while others suffered. Companies involved in development of combination products are fi

and returning to the web's initial purpose – to gather information, rather than simply to be impressed or entertained by image. Don’t get me wrong, a site’s aesthetics is important – but not to the detriment of what people visit sites for in the first place: information. Research shows that online readers look at content (scanning for relevant words and phrases) before design (the opposi

ding difficulty in defining their combination products and facing various challenges from selecting a combination to marketing it.

Following aspects would a

e to print), and if that content is pointless or boring, they promptly leave for another site. What makes quality copy invaluable is its ability to build relationships with your readers. So use images and graphics to add to your message, not overshadow it.

7. Search me – Far too many websites are geared towards outdated SEO (search-engine optimisation) techniques. Their pages are

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

Which markets to tap where the combination products can do fairly well?
Which combination prod

littered with irrelevant or repetitive search key words and phrases, interfering with the readability of the content. Poor copy flow and disorganised chaos that sends visitors away is often the result. Your readers are more important than any search engine – so focus on them with your content. By all means, use search terms, but be sure to build your copy around them, not the other way ar

cts are meaningful and rational?
Which therapeutic categories to select?
Which Combinations can address unmet needs of the patients?
Do combin

und.

8. It’s official! Web copy that sounds as if it's been penned by a bureaucrat will turn off most users. The Internet is a place for informality – so write to your readers as if you were talking to them. Use a personal, upbeat one of voice in your web writing. Use words and phrases that create emotion. Use the active voice, rather than the passive – eg, “We will you help banis

tions increase the patient compliance?
What would be the developing cost?
How to tackle the risks encountered during combination product developmen

h the blues,” not “The blues will be banished.” Remove jargon and big, fancy words and convoluted phraseology. Above all, write in plain English.

9. It’s in the details – One of the quickest ways for anyone to destroy their credibility is to appear illiterate. It might seem evident, but watch out for errors. Many, and I really do emphasise the word 'many', web pages contain countl

t?

As combination products don't fit into the traditional categories of drugs, medical devices, or biological products, the USFDA is in the process of devel

ss and obvious spelling and grammatical errors and confusing phrases. Sloppy copy will only make your visitors doubt the professionalism of your outfit and the quality of your offerings. Before you know it, they’ll be off to your competitors’ sites. So make sure your spelling, grammar and overall style usage is clean and consistent.

10. Size matters – Don’t underestimate visitors

ping new procedures for reviewing their safety, efficacy and quality.

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

and think they won’t bother to read a long page, or a website with plenty of content. Most people come to a website looking for quality information. Note the emphasis on quality. We’ve all seen those web pages that just go on and on, but don’t really say anything. So give your readers plenty of information that is specific to them (why have they come to your site? How do they benefit?). B

y and representatives from various regulatory agencies are working out to design the regulatory requirements for manufacture and sale of combination products

sides, they’re not the only ones who love content-rich sites; search engines rank sites according to their content.

11. Individuality counts – All web copy isn’t the same. For instance, a landing page is different to a home page, and a sales letter pages is different to an online order page, and so on. I’ve seen web sales letters written as if they are home pages, and the end resu

.

As there is an increasing trend of the combination products companies manufacturing such products should be able to tackle the problems involved in the de

lt is confusion. When a reader is confused, she will likely move on to another site. Take into account each page’s special considerations before writing a word of web copy.

12. Do you want a receipt with that? Another huge error is making it difficult for people to place an order. There’s no point expecting people to go to individual product pages and search for the ‘add to basket

elopment. They need to be wiser in analyzing the market trends and the regulatory requirements.

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

link to make an order. You have to make it obvious, and easy for them to buy products or services. So place order links on every page, and make them stand out.

By looking for and fixing these 12 website sins, you should add instant credibility to your site – and make way for more online sales opportunities.

Copyright, 2007 T Dooley, Creative Consultant - PR Guru - Marketing Diva

tion in industry events and feedback to regulatory authorities would be able to face the challenges and will be successful in developing combination products

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Useful Advices - Is Your Site Guilty Of These? (Common Website Blunders That Stop Sales)

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